Greek and Roman mythology & heroic legend

BU

THE TBMPLB PRIMERS

GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY
AND HEROIC LEGEND

By
PROFESSOR H. STEUDING

Translated from the German and edited
by

LIONEL D. BARNETT, M.A., D.Litt.

ZEUS
From the Otricoli Bust

GREEK&&

mYTHOLOGY
&HEROIC
LEGEHD

BY^PROF H
STEUDH1G

190 1 CS 29 &3O-BEDFORD-5TREBT* LOMUON

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TRANSLATOR S PREFACE

STUDY of Greek religion needs no apology, and should
need no bush. This all must feel who have looked upon the
creations of the art it inspired. But to purify and strengthen
admiration by the higher light of knowledge is no work of
ease.

No truth is more vital than the seeming paradox which
declares that Greek myths are not nature-myths. The ape
is not further removed from the man than is the nature-myth
from the religious fancy of the Greeks as we meet them in
history. The Greek myth is the child of the devout and
lovely imagination of the noble race that dwelt around the
Aegaean. Coarse fantasies of brutish forefathers in their
Northern homes softened beneath the southern sun into a pure
and godly beauty, and thus gave birth to the divine forms of
Hellenic religion.

Comparative Mythology can teach us much. It can shew
how gods are born in the mind of the savage and moulded
into his image. But it cannot reveal to us the heart of
the Greek as his devout thoughts turned towards his gods.
Greece sees God with her own eyes ; and if we would share
the loveliness of her vision we must put away from our
thoughts the uncouth forms which had been worn by her
northern forefathers deities, the slough cast off by her gods
as they grew into shapes of godliness and beauty. True it is
that in regions where nature and history hindered Greek
religion from developing its potential riches, that slough was
still often trailed by the figures of popular faith ; but these
exceptions point all the more effectively the lesson of evolu
tion in Greek religion.

iv TRANSLATOR S PREFACE

While the plastic fancy of the Greek was actively re
modelling the uncouth and formless conceptions of barbarous
faith into moral and human personalities, the Roman went on
a different course. The sternly legal mind of Rome, which
looked upon the person merely as a unit in corporations ruled
by definite law, was little likely to lend human personality to
its conceptions of divine forces, its numina. Instead of gods
it worshipped deified functions ; and as the whole sphere of
the community s political and social life was methodically
mapped out into divisions and subdivisions, and each of these
was put under the presidency of its own deified self, the result
was the Indigitamenta, in whose mathematical precision the
legal spirit of Roman religion reached its climax. Then
followed the inrush of foreign worships, and the native religion
died.

Thus there are few more instructive studies than that of the
gods of Greece and the deities of Rome. And withal it is a
study which of late years has met with little general recog
nition in England, if we can judge by the number of reason
ably scientific books treating of it. The present translation
of Professor Steuding s valuable little work has been brought
out in the hope that the interest of the public is but slumber
ing. I have added nothing but a few notes to the original,
and I have altered little, even in parts where my own
judgment led me to dissent from the learned author. A few
illustrations have been put in, and the marks of the quantities
transferred from the text to the index.

Department of Or. P. B. & MSS.
British Museum.

CONTENTS
Greek Mythology

BEGINNINGS OF GREEK BELIEF AND WORSHIP,
I-".

PAGE

I. GHOSTS, 1-3 ...... I

I!. NETHER-WORLD POWERS : HEROES, 4, 5 . . 3

III. NATURE AND ELEMENTAL POWERS, 6 . 5

IV. WORSHIP, 7-12 ..... 5

GREEK RELIGION FROM THE BEGINNING OF
THE HOMERIC AGE, 1312

GODS DETERMINED AND CLASSIFIED, 13, 14 . . 8

THE NETHER WORLD, 15-18 .... 9

LIFE AFTER DEATH, I 5 . . . . .

ERINYES, 19, 2O . . . . . . II

HARPIES, 21 . . . . . . . 12

ASKLEPIOS, 22, 23 . . . . . 12

HADES, 24 . . . . . . . 13

OLYMPIAN DE TIES, 25 . . ... . 14

I. ZEUS AND HIS CIRCLE: HERA, 26-40 . 14

CHARITES, 4! . . . . 2O

MUSES, 42 . . . . 2O

HORAI, 43 21
II. GE, DEMETER AND KORE : ELEUSINIAN MYS
TERIES, 44-52 . . . . 22

III. ATHENA, HEPHA1STOS, PROMETHEUS, HESTIA,

53-66 ...... 26

vi CONTENTS

PAGE

IV. APOLLON, ARTEMIS, HEKATE, 67-8 1 . 36

V. HERMES, THE SATYRS, AND PAN, 82-90 . 46

VI. POSEIDON AND HIS CIRCLE, 9 1 -99 . . 5!

VII. PERSONIFICATIONS OF THE HEAVENLY BODIES

AND OTHER NATURE-DEITIES, IOO-IO4 58

VIII. ARES AND APHRODITE, IO5-II2 . . 6l

IX. THE RELIGION OF DIONYSOS, 113-118 . 64

X. THE GODDESSES OF FATE, II9~I22 . 68

HEROIC POETRY
i. THEBES: KADMOS, 123; ANTIOPE,. 124;

NIOBE, 125 . . . . . 72
II. ARGOLIS : IO, 126; DANAOS, 127;

PERSEUS, 128; TANTALOS, 129-131 74
in. CORINTH: SISYPHOS, 132; BELLEROPHONTES,

133 78

iv. LAKONIA: DIOSKOROI, 134; HELENA, 135 79

V. HERAKLES, 136-149 .... 79

VI. THESEUS, 150-158 .... 87
VII. MELEAGROS AND THE HUNT OF KALYDON,

159, 160 . . . 91

VIII. THE ARGONAUTS, l6l-l66 . . 92

IX. THE THEBAN CYCLE, 167-174 . . 95

X. THE ACHAIAN AND TROJAN CYCLE, 175-

186 99

Roman Mythology, i87ff.

INDETERMINATELY CONCEIVED BEINGS: (l)
MANES; (2) GENII, 188; (3) LARES;

(4) PENATES, 189; (5) INDIGETES, 190 IO6

CONTENTS vii

PAGE
II. NATURE-SPIRITS AND DEITIES AKIN TO THE

SPIRITS OF ACTIONS: (i) DEITIES OF

SPRINGS, igi ; RIVER-GODS, IQ2 ;

NEPTUNUS, 193; (2) IANUS, 194,
195; VESTA, 196; VOLCANUS, 197;
SATURNUS, CONSUS, AND OPS, 198 ;

(3) DEITIES OF FERTILITY: FAUNUS,
199; SILVANUS, LIBER, AND VERTUMNUS,
2OO ; FAUNA AND FERONIA, 2OI;
FLORA AND PALES, 2O2 ; DIANA, 203 ;

(4) MARS, 204, 2O5; QUIRINUS, 2O6 IO8
III. IUPPITER, 2O7-2IO; IUNO, 211, 212 117
iv. DEITIES OF DEATH: ORCUS, MANIA, LARA,

213 ...... 120

V. PERSONIFICATIONS, 214 . . . . 121

VI. DEITIES OF FOREIGN ORIGIN, 2 I 5~2 I 8 . 122

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . .124

INDEX ..... ..127

GREEK MYTHOLOGY

Beginnings of Greek Belief and Worship.

I. Ghosts. i. All natural religion arises from wonder
t inexplicable phenomena, from the fear of evil and the striving
or blessings which cannot be gained by one s own power,
besides these there is illusion, that is, a belief in the pre-
ence of beings who are the unknown cause of our wonder,
vho can free us from terror and gratify our desires. In-
luenced by love of self, the man who stands on the lower levels
f civilisation is most zealous in inquiring into the experiences
vhich come to his notice in his own person and in his fellows,
sickness and death, as they break the daily course of life and
brm the main object of fear, claim his special attention,
fit the same time the phenomena of dreamland, which are
iometimes raised to peculiar vividness by the nightmares
iccompanying them, and occasionally also those of drunken-
icss or convulsion, suggest the presence of powers which are
lot perceptible to the senses, and yet can influence him some-
;imes agreeably and sometimes disagreeably. These unknown
Deings he therefore regards as the prime cause of those phe
nomena which would else be inexplicable to him. Supported
ay the inborn wish of every man for continued personal life
ifter death, there hence grows up a belief in the soul, and at
:he same time a kindred belief in goblins or ghosts, such as
still meets us among races which have remained on the lowest
grade of development, who have no other ideas of things
beyond the perception of the senses than this belief.

2. It is probable that the Greeks once were at a like
stage of thought, though it is unlikely that they were ever

* BEGINNINGS OF

exclusively dominated by these conceptions. The later cus
tomary rites of worship, which for the most part come down
from very primitive times, and the poems of Homer, preserv
ing as they do much that is vastly earlier than the age of
their creation, together with the results of excavations, which
in this connection are scanty, constitute the oldest sources for
our knowledge of Greek religious life. The most important
section in the religious history of this prehistoric time seems
to have been coloured by the influence of the Tribal Wander
ings and the epic poetry that grew up in connection with
them. Hence we shall begin by describing in broad outline
what can be inferred as to the religious conceptions of the
age preceding these migrations.

As among most of the Indogermans, burial was the earliest
form of disposing of the dead. The grave was accounted the
dwelling of the deceased, who was imagined as continuing in
bodily life. Food and drink, vessels and arms, were put
with him ; his favourite wife and the slaves whom he had
needed in life for his wellbeing were also obliged at first to
follow the house-master into death. Even in Homer, Achilleus
at the burial of Patroklos slaughters twelve captured Trojan
youths, doubtless to make thus their souls serve his friend in
the world beyond. Later, sacrifices of beasts took the place
of human offerings ; but many symbolic rites still indicated
that really the latter were supposed to be slaughtered.

3. Meat and drink naturally had to be renewed from
time to time ; hence the Cult of the Grave chiefly consists of
repeated offerings of food, annually performed on the birthday
of the deceased and at the general festivals of the dead. To
the latter class belonged the Nekysia or Nemesia, celebrated
afterwards by the Athenians in September, and the Clytrcf,
held by them at the end of February. The souls avenge
neglect by sending sickness or death ; hence they were called
Keres, or * destructive ones. Men sought by all manner of
protective rites to secure themselves from the influence of
these dreaded powers, and to prevent their return into their
former dwelling.

GREEK BELIEF AND WORSHIP 3

Conceived at this stage of thought, the dead kept the form in
which they had departed from life ; to the ghost were ascribed
all the properties of the corpse. By the offering of fresh
blood, which they lack when once the heart has stopped,
they may for a time be called back into life and answer
questions a conception which gave birth to the practice of
raising the dead and asking oracles of them.

At the same time a belief existed that the soul leaves the
decaying body and assumes animal forrrfS In particular the
snake, as it is remarkable for noiseless and rapid motion, and
often dwells in the earth, was imagined to embody a soul ;
but the forms of bats, birds, and later of butterflies, were also
assigned to the spirits of the departed.

II. Nether-World Powers: Heroes. 4- Even
in this age there was a universal worship in Greece of powerful
beings dwelling under the earth in cavern-like chambers, who
were styled either Underground Gods (yQovioi) or Heroes. Of
the latter tales were sometimes told (as that of Amphiaraos,
in the region of Thebes and Oropos, 172), that they
had been translated without dying to their dwelling-place
under the earth ; they nevertheless received offerings of the
sort usually presented to the dead. They all exerted their
influence only in the neighbourhood of their abode, generally
by appearing in significant dreams to those who slept over it
(incubatio}, and revealing either future events or the proper
remedies for sickness. They are clearly the lords of the
souls dwelling in the soil of their country ; their halls may
have been originally imagined as like the underground temples
connected with the graves of kings which have been unearthed
at Mykenai and elsewhere.

5. It seems to have been generally the reputed ancestors
(dpx??yTcu) of families who were regarded as heroes, for
thereby the belief in their former existence on earth was kept
alive among their worshippers. 1 These were distinguished
from the common dead only by the fact that they received

1 See however E. Meyer s appendix to his Ursprung der OJystee in
Hermes XXX.

4 BEGINNINGS OF

adoration from a whole family, or an association of that nature.
Their grave, used as a place of sacrifice, formed always the
central point of their worship. In the later representations of
art, which are certainly based upon ancient conceptions, they
usually appear as warriors, because tribal ancestors were gener
ally described as such, and often on horse, seated on a throne,
or reclining on a dinner-couch and feasting, 1 surrounded by

Spartan Relief. Berlin.

their worshippers, who, as mortals, are drawn in much smaller
proportions than the heroes themselves. Hence their usual
attribute has come to be the cup, as well as armour, the horse,
and the snake.

These primitive heroes however are even in Homer so
intimately associated with forms created by the poets them
selves, their own history and deeds have been so thoroughly

1 On the so-called funeral-banquet reliefs (on which see
Mittheil. d. deutschen archacol, Inst. xu Athcn. xxi. 347 ff.).

GREEK BELIEF AND WORSHIP 5

transfigured and recast by poetry, that the original element
can no longer be threshed out. Hence Heroic Legend, great
as is its antiquity in part, must take the last place in the order
of our exposition.

III. Nature and Elemental Powers. 6. Man s
innate striving to grasp the causes connecting the occurrences
observed by him is not limited to the experiences which
concern his own person ; he also contemplates Nature, in
which he lives and whose influence he feels. As the child
ascribes life as an attribute to things surrounding him as soon
as they seem to exert any activity, so the primitive man regards
as living everything that puts forth a force, moves, or shews
fertility ; that is, he deems it, like himself, possessed by a soul-
like being (nature-daemon), which is the ground of its activity.

Sometimes the display of force observed in a process of
nature is too great and too prolonged for an ordinary man
or beast to have produced it ; and then its assumed origin,
the nature-dsemon, also rises above the level of beast or man
in power and permanence. According again as it appears to
man as hostile or friendly, forcible or gentle, creative or
receptive, he ascribes to the being causing it hostile or friendly
feelings, male or female sex, without however distinguishing
it at first from similar daemons by a series of particular
properties ; indeed, such a distinction was not made even by
the later Greeks as regards the troops of river-gods, nymphs,
Nereids, Satyrs, etc.

IV. Worship. 7. On the other hand, one such soul-
like or daemonic being in some spot might come as a result
of peculiar circumstances (e.g. chance success of prayer and
sacrifices, miracles, healings) to outdistance all others of his
kind in apparent power, and hence in extent of worship. Then
the natural seclusion that pathless mountains imposed on the
districts of Greece made it possible for this being to grow
into a deity of clearly defined individuality. It became a
deity as soon as a human community of some size ascribed to
it power to vouchsafe all that individuals desire and to protect
them from everything that they fear.

6 BEGINNINGS OF

A deity could have its seat (ISos) in any object at will, in
trees as well as in stones fallen from heaven, in springs and
rivers, without men forming a clear conception of its proper
shape. Later, when they tried to picture it and give it a
particularly acceptable seat in its own statue, they were
compelled to frame it in the likeness of an actual living being,
a man or even a beast ; for it is only from actually observed
beings compounded of soul and body that men can imagine
creatures of pure spirit. All desirable properties possessed
by the former were ascribed in a more intense degree to the
latter, and they were thought free from all earthly limitations.
Customary morality grew ; as soon as it seemed worth striv
ing for, the deities naturally became its guardians, assuming
the part in which as a rule the gods figure already in
Homer.

8. Man thus can conceive superhuman powers only in his
own likeness, as monstrously strong persons ; and so he strives
to influence them in the way in which he is wont to deal
with human potentates. He shews his respect for them by
approaching them in a humble posture, with a cleansed body
and in clean garments ; he begs for their grace, and, when
they are wroth, for mercy or forgiveness ; he gives them the
best of his own possessions to secure their favour, to express
his gratitude for graces received, or to make good and atone
for a fault committed against them.

9. Thus arise the three main forms of worship purifica
tion, prayer, and sacrifice. To express humble veneration
and submission men actually cast themselves down upon the
earth (irpoa-Kvvelv, supplicare} y or at least lifted the hand,
with the palm turned upwards, towards the abode of the god
and of his statue ; and furthermore they fettered themselves
with bands or swathes, so as to surrender themselves in utter
powerlessness into his hands. It was for this reason that after
wards in practising any holy act men bound themselves, as
well as the beasts of sacrifice and objects consecrated to
gods, with fillets (TCUVICU) ; and the word religio properly
indicates nothing but the relation of bondage in which men

GREEK BELIEF AND WORSHIP 7

stand to the deity, the tie or obligation which one feels in
relation to it.

10. All purification (Ka.6apii.os, lustratio, from 7w) also
referred originally to the body ; and for this water was the
chief requisite. It was particularly necessary in cases of
bloodshed and on touching a corpse, in order thus to escape
the power of the dreaded spirits of the dead, who by these
deeds were drawn upon one s head. The notion of liberation
from a moral blemish was not associated till much later times
with the old rite. Water from the sea or a spring was used
because these cannot* be made permanently foul.

Prayer similarly arose from the simple request, the effect of
which men thought to strengthen by adding a promise (vow,
fi/X^h votum). Special set phrases were only employed
because results seemingly proved them to be more capable than
other words of moving the gods to gratify the request uttered.

ii. As an offering (dj/aS^/xa) everything was presented
that was suitable for inspiring the deity with gratification.
This consisted of objects which either were used in the ritual
acts or in the adornment of the temple, or else possessed a
special value for the dedicator himself. The gift oftenest
presented to gods was the offering of food and drink ; and
this consisted of all things that man himself relishes, for in
earliest times men certainly ascribed bodily enjoyment to the
gods. Later men burned the sacrifice and sent up merely
its agreeably scented smoke and savour into the sphere of
the dwellers in heaven.

12. Lastly, as men express their will by signs or words,
an attempt was made to learn the will of the deity from signs
(repara, ostenta) such as lightning, rainbows, eclipses of sun
and moon, flight of birds, or from significant words and sounds
(<j>r)[ji.ai, KAijSoves, omina). From the former developed in
Greece the sign-oracles of Zeus, in Italy the auspicia and the
whole augural science, and from the latter the spoken oracles
of Apollon. The latter, originally only expressed by signs
and lots, were later strongly influenced by the ecstatic forms
of Dionysiac prophecy. On the other hand, the study of

8 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

the liver and the rest of the entrails of slaughtered beast-
sacrifices (iepoo-/co7ria, bonuftcina) arose from the universal
demand that a sacrificial animal should be healthy and free
from blemish.

In the oldest times so long as the gods themselves still
dwelt in trees, springs, rude stones fallen (or reputed to have
fallen) from heaven, and pointed columns (jSairuAos), sacred
groves (re/Aevos, templum) furnished with a fence (Trept/JoAos)
served as the place of divine worship ; later the main building
of the old dwelling-house of man (/xeyapov, aedes}, consisting
of a hall with a vestibule, was taken as pattern for the abode
of the deity, the temple (vaos, vews, cello).

Greek Religion from the Beginning of the
Homeric Age.

Gods determined and classified. 13. The pressure
of enemies moved the Greek tribes to wander southwards
and over the eastern sea to the islands and the coast of Asia
Minor ; and by these migrations, which took place about a
thousand years before our era, a mighty change was brought
about in the character of their religion. When the races set
forth, the gods they adored indeed accompanied them into
their new home and received here new places of worship ;
and their ritual continued to be practised in their old sanctuaries
as well, and was willingly taken over by the conquerors from
a fear of making these gods their enemies. But whereas
formerly, as it would seem, only one chief deity was
worshipped in each spot, the shifting and blending of stems
and religious associations now brought many of them together
in one and the same district. To make room for all,
the sphere of each god s power had now to be marked
out and restricted to a particular department of life ; occa
sionally however, as one might expect from their former
more comprehensive character, they overlapped into domains
belonging to others.

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 9

14. Thus gradually was framed on the human pattern the
conception which meets us in Homer the idea of families of
gods and of a patriarchally arranged State of gods, in which
each several member exercises only the function apportioned to
him. The travelling rhapsodes and later the poets of the Iliad
and Odyssey themselves may have had much influence in bring
ing about a harmony in the mutually conflicting claims of the
several deities ; but assuredly they did not materially diverge
from the faith prevailing in their home, the Ionian cities of
the coasts and islands of Asia Minor. In these communities
the mixture of different elements of the race must already
have been an active cause in thus restricting and equalising
different deities claims.

Life After Death. 15. Particularly striking is the
change which now displays itself in the conception of the
character and condition of departed spirits. Their ritual was
more closely connected with the original place of worship
than was the case with proper deities ; for it consisted solely
in offerings of nourishment for the corpse who lived on restfully
in the grave. But after severance from the ancestral land,
the service of the dead buried there came perforce to an end ;
men could not even carry away with them the relics of their
universally adored first parents. To this was added the
influence of the newly arisen custom of burning the deceased,
which may have been intended to destroy as quickly as
possible the departed soul s strength and power hitherto
preserved by attentions to the corpse, and thus to be secure
from its wrath.

1 6. In this train of thought the idea of the bodilessness of
the dead gradually came into the foreground. In death, as
men saw, the activity of life vanished with the expiration of the
last breath ; and so they looked upon the breath itself as
the basis of life, that is, the soul, as is proved by the twofold
meaning of ^v^> anima, breath, and the like. Hence they
now imagined the souls separate from the body as airy beings,
but at the same time, confusing this with their former
conception, they left them their human or animal form, so

io GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

that they were thought of sometimes as shadowy figures
(cnaeu, umbrae] or smoke-like images (eiScoAa, simulacra,
imagines], sometimes as little winged, fluttering, but otherwise
man-like figures.

At the same time the features common to all individual
graves led to the notion of a general abode of souls, subterranean
like the grave, but unapproachable for man by the agency of
prayer and offering ; it was sundered from the upper world
by impassable rivers, such as Styx ( The Loathly ), Acheron
( Stream of Anguish ), Kokytos ( River of Wailing ),
Pyriphlegethon ( Fire-River ), and Lethe ( Forgetfulness ),
from which the departed drank oblivion.

17. As soon as the body of the dead man has been
covered with earth, the ferryman Charon transports the soul
awaiting him on the bank over Styx or Acheron. For this he
receives as payment the obolos (about i 3</.), which was
placed beneath the tongue of every corpse, in one sense as
purchase-price for his property, which else would have to go
with him. In the lower world the departed, according to
the belief of Homer, live a sad and empty life of unreality,
continuing their earthly occupations unchanged but without
consciousness and active power. Only in a few men especially
loved or hated by the gods do consciousness and feeling still
abide there, so that they may be rewarded or punished for
their deeds on earth. From this realm of death there is
no return. Hence the entrance, which men in later time
ventured to identify with various ravines, e. g. at Kichyros in
Thesprotia, at Pheneos in Arkadia, on the promontory of
Tainaron in Lakonia, and by the lake Avernus near Cumae
in Lower Italy, is guarded by the three-headed dog Kerberos ;
and Charon too ferries no man back over the Styx.

1 8. The natural wish for a more cheerful form of life
after death led after the Homeric Age to the conception of
Elysion ( HXvcnov ireS/ov), the field of arrival, or of the
departed* (compare eXr/XvOa), which was imagined to be not
in the nether world but at the western end of the earth by
the Okcanos ; and hither the gods translate to a blissful god-

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE n

like life of enjoyment many heroes and heroines especially
dear to them, born to them from mortals or closely connected
with them by other ties of kinship, without any necessity of
previous death. In later poets the place of this is taken by
the Islands of the Blest.

From the fifth century B.C., as the faith in a retributive
justice increased, there grew up under the potent influence of
the Orphic doctrine the idea of a Judgment of the Dead.
In this doctrine, Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Aiakos assign
to the departed according to their earthly life an abode in
Elysion or in the gloomy prison of Tartaros, the deepest pit
of the lower world.

Erinyes. 19. In Homer however there is as yet
no mention of such a divine retribution after death. A few
favourites of the gods are rewarded with a blissful immor
tality, and he is aware of the punishment of a few great evil
doers like Sisyphos and Tantalos, who have sinned against
the gods themselves ; elsewhere however punishment even
the punishment of murder is left to earthly avengers. It is
only in the absence of a kinsman bound by law to take blood-
vengeance that, according to the oldest view, the wrathful
soul (Erlnys] of the slain itself pursues the slayer. This is
particularly the case when a man has murdered a parent or
brother, who otherwise would himself be bound to take blood-
vengeance. In Homer however the angry individual souls
have already developed into special goddesses of vengeance
represented in the sacred trinity of the Erinyes, who in the
service of Zeus watch over moral order in the world, and
hence are also called Praxidikai, To soften them, men were
wont in Athens to give them the flattering name of Semnai,
august ones, and in Sekyon and Argos that of Eumsnides,
kindly ones.

20. Like dogs and birds of prey which as devouring
corpses were believed to be animated by their souls, and
probably represented as such in earlier times, the Erinyes pursue
the flying man-slayer in the form of black winged women
around whose heads snakes writhe. In their hands they hold

12 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

snakes or burning torches, or a whip the blow of which
inspires him whom it smites with madness and stupefaction.
Their dwelling is the lower world, from which they are
conjured up by the curse of the sufferer as well as by the
self-damnation of the perjured.

Harpies. 21. Another kind of ghosts further deve
loped in the same way are the Harpies (harpyiai, * Rob
bers ), Aello (< Stormfoot ), and Okypete ( Swift-flier ),
death-goddesses who are at work in the storm-blast ravishing
away souls. They are represented with wings and the form
of horses, later also as winged women or as creatures with a
woman s head and breast and the body of a bird, shapes
which were meant to express their swiftness. On the ancient
relief of Xanthos they carry away the souls of their victims
pressed like children to their bosoms.

Asklepios. 22. In Homer s time a few of the
cave-dwelling subterranean powers formerly limited to their
own districts (described above, 4) have likewise come to
be widely esteemed as heroes or gods. One of the most
venerated amongst them is Asklepios, who in all probability
had his original home in the neighbourhood of Trikka in
Thessaly, at the foot of Pindos. His worshippers and
priests, the family of the Asklepiadai, practised healing as a
secret science, so that the remedies prescribed by their god
in dream-oracles and skilfully applied by them were wont to
have the desired effect. Hence his reputation rose above
that of other beings of his kind, and his worship was then
carried further ; it came to Boiotia, where it was con
nected with the kindred cult of Trophonios at Lebadeia,
thence to Phokis, Athens, and Epidauros in Argolis, finally
even to Rome, where the god s name was modified to
Aesculapius.

23. Like the dead, he was represented in the form of
a snake, and in Homer he still appears as an actual physician-
hero. In Homer he is a son of the healing god Apollon,
but he is instructed in the arts of the leech by the wise
Centaur Cheiron. When he recalls even the dead to life by his

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 13

kill, the god of the nether world complains of him to Zeus,
who thereupon smites him with his lightning. His children
re the healers Machaon and Podaleirios, together with the
goddesses bestowing health and healing, Hygteia ( Health-
iver ), laso ( Healer ), Panakeia ( All-curing ), and Aigle
Brilliance ). Asklepios is usually figured as a kindly man
with a shrewd look, standing, and with his upper body bared,
token he carries a large staff enwreathed by a snake, often
oo a fillet round the head.

Hades. 24. Beyond doubt Hades, whose home is
n the region of Elis, was originally of kindred character to
Asklepios. By the time of Homer however he had risen from
he rank of a local god to be the ruler of the universal Nether
World. Like the dead, he is invisible, hence the very name
4 idoneus, Aides, or Hades, the invisible one or giver of
nvisibility (d privative + i8-eiv); this property is attributed

a helmet usually worn by him, which serves as a cap of
darkness.

This all-powerful ruler of the lower world is accounted the
rother of Zeus and Poseidon ; indeed he himself is termed
Underground Zeus (Z. x^owos, Kara^oVtos), and like the
brmer represented as enthroned with the sceptre. His spouse

1 Persephoneia (or Persephone, in Attic Phersephatta or
^herrhephatta), and like her Hades as lord of the depths of
arth is at the same time guardian of the corn as long as it
ests in the bosom of the ground. In this quality he bears as
oken the full horn or cornucopia, and receives much worship
nder the names Pluton ( bestower of riches, in Latin Dls
>ater}, Klymenos ( the distinguished ), and Eubuleus ( well-
visher ), while as a god of death he was especially adored
,t Pylos ( Gate of the nether world) in Elis. When
>rayers are made to him the earth is struck with the hands in
>rder that he shall hear them ; and to him, as to the dead,
lack victims are offered. The dark-hued cypress, which was
lanted on graves, and otherwise much used in the cult of the
lead, and the quickly fading narcissus are sacred to him. The
irinyes, Thanatos ( Death ), and the sleep-god Hypnos,

14 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

who are conceived as like him, dwell in his domain. As
to the legend of Herakles wounding him, see 143.

Olympian Deities. 25. At the head of the divine
State of Olympos we find in Homer Zeus and his royal
spouse Hera. Their favourite children are Athena, the
protectress of the weaver s art and friend of heroes, and the
skilful smith Hephaistos. Somewhat more distant from them
are Apollon, Artemis, and Hermes, as also the sister and
brother of Zeus, Demeter the giver of corn and the lord of
the sea Poseidon. Ares and Aphrodite, deities who probably
are of foreign origin, have already been taken into the family
of the gods on terms of equality ; on the other hand, the
embodiments of the sun and moon as well as the other
nature-deities stand in the background. The power of the
goddesses who guide destiny is now in its earliest develop
ment. Last came the mystic and ecstatic religion of Dionysos,
which spread abroad in the age after Homer, and by working
upon the emotions and imagination gained great importance
at the expense of other worships, which by this time had
become more formal.

I. Zeus and his Circle. 26. The origin of the
name Zevs> which appears in the genitive as AiFo ?, certainly
goes back like the Sanskrit Dyaus, German Ziu, and
Latin luppiter, which last is compounded of Diovis (or 70 wV)
and pater to the root dm ( cast, shoot, shine ), and
thus may equally well designate lightning or a light-god ; l
among the Greeks and Romans however this deity certainly
developed into a storm-god. Thessaly and a part of Epeiros
once tenanted by Thessalians seem to have been the native
home of Zeus ; Dodona, at the foot of the ridge of Tmaros
or Tomaros, specially claimed regard as the primitive seat of
his worship. In this unusually stormy and hence well-watered

1 In the Vedas, the earliest literature of India, Dyaus is either the
concrete sky or else the sky as an All-Father, associated with
Earth as Mother. He is little more than an abstraction to the early
Hindu ; the quality of fatherhood is practically the only touch
of personality in the conception.

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 15

and fruitful region he dwelt under the name of Zevs vaios
( Zeus of the waters ), as he was elsewhere as rain-giver
styled tieVios and o/x/?pios ; his abode was in a primeval oak-
grove, or rather in a single tree thereof, at the foot of which
gushed forth a holy well. By the rustling of the twigs he
manifested his will to mortals and above all to his priests the
Selloi, who after the manner of primitive ages slept upon
the earth with no cover except the shelter of the trees.
Thus it was that Dodona stood highest in repute of the
oracle-homes of Zeus. Elsewhere lightning and thunder, as
well as ominous birds, chiefly the eagle, which dashes like
a lightning-flash upon its prey from the clouds, were looked
upon as the representatives of his will.

27. The tree-dwelling of the god (Zevs evSevSpos) points
to the great antiquity of his worship in this region. The
reason for his being worshipped particularly in an oak is
manifestly that, before the cultivation of corn was introduced,
acorns and flesh formed men s chief food ; and moreover
the thunderbolt, in which Zeus /cepavnos himself descends as
Ka.Tai(3a.Tr)<; to earth, more often strikes the towering stem of
the oak than other trees.

28. Closely akin to the worship of Zeus at Dodona
was that upon the Lykaion ( Wolf-hill ) in the south-west
of Arkadia. Here too the oak and a stream were sacred to
him, though they did not as in Dodona take the first place in
the cult. In times of continuous drought a priest touched
with an oak-twig the surface of the spring ffagno( f the sacred
or pure one ) until a mist arose from it which gathered into
a cloud (Zeus ve<j>e\r]yeperr)<s) and brought the desired rain.

29. There was a sanctuary of Zeus that no man dared to
tread. It stood on the peak of the Arkadian mount Olympos;
the story ran that he who should intrude into it would there
cast no shadow, as indeed is natural in the Olympian realm of
light. The high antiquity of this cult also is shown by the
fact that it claimed human sacrifices, a cruel custom said to
have been introduced by King Lykaon, the founder of the
competitions there celebrated in honour of Zeus

ifi GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

He once slew a child (his son or grandson) and set it as a
meal before Zeus to test his omniscience, according to the
later explanation ; properly however every sacrifice is to be
explained as feeding the deity. In punishment for this he
was changed into a wolf (Xv/cos), the type of the flying
man-slayer. As Zeus has the power to inflict punishment in
this way for blood-guilt (Z. np.wp6<s), he can also as /ca^a/scrios
vouchsafe to the penitent atonement and purification (com
pare 72 of Apollon).

30. Whilst in Dodona he was probably looked upon as
the bestower of all good gifts in general, he is here in Arkadia
the Z. oLKpalo? or /coptx^atos, the dweller on the mountain-tops
where storm-clouds couch ; and as such he later received
worship throughout Greece, and especially on the lofty
Olympos in Thessaly. From these heights he rules as
supreme god (VTTCITOS, vi/acrros) over the surrounding land,
like a king from his mountain castle ; hence he is also called
Z. /JacriAeus. Besides the chief tokens of his power, the
thunderbolt and the aigis (a representation of the storm-
cloud with snaky lightnings twisting around, which later was
commonly figured as a shaggy goatskin fringed with snakes),
he carries as ensign of his kingship the sceptre.

31. As lord of the land he protects right and the right
eous, and punishes all evil-doing, especially perjury (Z. op/aos),
as well as wrong to a guest (Z. eVtos) or suppliant (Z.
iKc crtos). The housefather hence makes sacrifice to him as
the guardian of house and hearth (Z. ep/ceios), the head of
the family to him as its tutelary god (Z. yeve^Aios) ; many
princely families claimed descent from him as father of their
race. As the king advances in battle before his lieges, Zeus
as champion and leader of the host (Z. dy^rup, OT/XXTIOS,
(TTparrjyos) leads his worshippers and holds victory (VLK-TJ)
in his hand ; hence Pheidias placed the winged Nike
upon the outstretched hand of his statue of the Olympian
Zeus.

32. His adoption into the system of the Greek gods took
place seemingly in Crete. The story of the birth and death

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 17

if Zeus is certainly based on a Cretan worship of a sub-
erranean deity called Zeus Chthonios, whose cavern-dwelling
vas looked on as a grave. His father appears here as Kronos,
vho devoured his own children ; but the wife of Kronos,
Ihea, the \vr\rf}p opei o, a maternal deity akin to the Kybele
,nd Artemis of Asia Minor, gave him instead of Zeus a
tone swaddled like a babe, by which perhaps is meant Zeus
limself hidden as a meteoric stone in the storm-cloud, to be
hen vomited forth from heaven in the lightning-flash. Suckled
>y the goat Amaltheia, a personification of the storm-cloud
hat bestows nourishing moisture, Zeus swiftly grows up until
le is able to overpower his father.

33. Through his by-name Titan Zeus is characterised as
*od of the heaven and sun, and a troop of older powers
ippear as Titanes by his side. With the aid of other gods
md of the three Kyklopes ( Round -eyes ), Arges ( Bright-
Weather ), Brontes ( Thunder ), and Steropes ( Light-
ling ), whose one round eye is the thunderbolt, Zeus conquers
;hese Titans and hurls them into Tartaros, the lowest part of
:he nether world, after having forced his father to bring forth
igain from his belly the children formerly swallowed by him.
That this battle reflects the storm, compared to the hurtle of
a fray, is proved by the names of the Kyklopes who aided to
settle it.

34. In close connection with this are the other two
battles of Zeus with the Gigantes and with Typhoeus. The
former were reputed to have been the giant sons of Ge
( Earth ), who rose up against the kingship of Zeus ; with
the aid however of Athena, the other Olympian gods, and
Herakles, but chiefly by the thunderbolts of Zeus, they were
overpowered and buried beneath mountains, under which they
still burn with the lightning-fire and writhe in agony, thus pro
ducing volcanic outbreaks and earthquakes. In the Odyssey
they have already become, like the Kyklopes, an earthly
giant race hurling rocks, which for its arrogance is destroyed
by the gods. In the art of the Hellenistic age however,
and particularly on the frieze of the altar of Pergamon now

c

18 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

in Berlin, they were commonly represented with snaky coils
for feet.

35. In the same way Typhoeus or Typhon ( the
smoking* or steaming one ) is an embodiment, probably
of Asiatic origin, and perhaps native to Mount Argaios in
Cappadocia, of the steam and smoke which bursts out during
earthquakes from the ground and from volcanoes, as well as of
the mighty forces there at work. Although he is armed with
a hundred fire-spurting heads of snakes, he is like the Titans
hurled by Zeus with his lightnings into Tartaros plainly a
picture of the seeming struggle that the storms accompanying
volcanic outbreaks wage with the powers of the depths, which
at the end of the eruption appear to sink back through the
crater into the bowels of the earth.

36. In Dodona the spouse of Zeus was held to be
Dione. Her name is plainly derived from that of Zeus him
self (compare luppiter and luno] ; hence probably she was his
female complement, embodying the fertility which was there
his leading attribute. Her place, after the cultivation of corn
had been introduced, was taken in the Thessalian Pyrasos
( * Wheatland ) by the corn-bestower Demeter, who by him
becomes mother of Kore-Persephone, the subterranean pro
tectress and embodiment of the seed-corn. Later poetry gives
expression to the same thought by connecting the rain-giving
Uranos ( Heaven ) with Gaia or Ge ( Earth ), who is
impregnated by him. In the same way Zeus unites in the
Argive legend with Danae as golden rain, in the Theban
story with Semele, who dies in his embraces when at her
request he comes to her in the same form as to Hera, that is,
as storm-god.

Hera. 37. In Argos, Mykenai, Sparta, on the island of
Euboia (probably the centre from which the cult started), the
range of Kithairon, the island of Samos, and many other places,
Queen Hera stands by the side of the King of the Gods.
Her most glorious temple lay between Argos and Mykenai.
Here, as in the other places of her worship, the chief festival
was her marriage with Zeus (tepos yuju.os) which was held in

Hera Ludovisi.

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 19

arly spring. She is the guardian of wedlock ( H. vyta,
e/a) and the jealous champion of womankind and its
ights ; the Goddess of Delivery, Ileithyia or Hileithya, is
ccounted her daughter. Hebe ( Bloom of Youth ), the
war-god Ares, and the smith-god Hephaistos appear as
ifFspring of this couple.

38. A male parallel to Hebe is Ganymedes, son of Tros
r Laomedon of Troy. On account of his beauty Zeus caused
lim to be ravished away by an eagle and made him his page
nd favourite. Like Hebe he sets before the gods ambrosia
nd nectar (honey and mead ?), and Hebe herself bears the
y-name Ganymede. About 420 B.C. Polykletos made a
epresentation in gold and ivory of the Queen of the Gods
or her chief temple mentioned above. She sat, fully clad, on
throne, upon her head a crown (stephanos}, in her right hand

pomegranate, which on account of its many pips was a
oken of fruitfulness ; in her left she held the royal sceptre
urmounted by a cuckoo, the messenger of spring. She
ppears similarly conceived in the noble colossal bust of the
v^illa Ludovisi, which however has also a connection with
he school of Praxiteles.

39. With special reference to the moral side in the
haracter of Zeus, which later was in the foreground, the
chool of allegorical poetry describes Metis or Wisdom and
Themis or Law as wives of this god, and makes him beget
>y the latter the Horai Eunomia ( Lawfulness ), Dike
Right ), and Elrene ( Peace ), as well as the Moirai
r fate-goddess who determine the arrangement of the human
ot. For the same reason he is accounted the father of the
^harites and Muses.

40. The artistic ideal of Zeus was created, in accord-
nee with the conception dominant in Homer, by Pheidias
bout 435 B.C. for the temple in Olympia, where the great
lational games were celebrated in his honour. The ancients
hemselves believed that the artist was inspired in his work
y the words of the Iliad (i. 528 ff.) " Spake the son of
Cronos and nodded thereto with swart brows, and the

20 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

ambrosial locks of the king rolled backward from his
immortal head, and the heights of Olympos quaked."
The head from Otricoli, produced about a century later
under the influence, as it seems, of Praxitelean art, gives
also the same general impression of majestic power and god
like calm, combined with gentleness and clearness of thought.

CharltCS. 41. These (the Latin Gratiae) apparently
passed from kindly bestowers of fruitfulness into goddesses
of winsome grace. They were adored in Orchomenos of
Boiotia under the symbol of three rough stones, which were
perhaps believed to have fallen from heaven. In other places
they were represented even in very early times as three maidens
in long garments, standing behind one another, and holding
in their hands musical instruments, flowers, fruit, and fillets
(raivtat), so that they are not to be distinguished from Muses
or Nymphs. From the fifth century B.C. they are united in
a group holding one another s hands ; it is not until the third
century that they are figured as quite naked and embracing
one another.

In the Iliad there is a single Charis, the wife of Hephaistos ;
Homer, however, knows also a whole family of Charites.
Their names are usually Euphrosyne ( Mirth ), Thale ia or
Thalia (< Joy-of-Life, Revel ), and Agldla ( Splen
dour ), by which they are characterised as goddesses of
cheerful social life, although in origin they may have been
closely akin to the Horai.

Muses. 42. Their fondness for the dance and the music
accompanying it is shared by the Muses (Musai, Seekers
or Discoverers *), goddesses perhaps of Thracian origin and
daughters of Zeus by Mnemosyne ( Memory ). These were
especially worshipped in connection with Dionysos, Apollon,
and the singer Orpheus, the representative of Dionysiac
poetry in the district of Pieria, on Olympos, and on
the Boiotian Helikon, at holy springs {Aganippe y&& Hippokrene

1 The most recent etymology connects the name with Lat. mans,
so that it would mean mountain-goddesses.

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 21

on Helikon, Kastalia on Parnassos). Their number is not yet
mentioned in the Iliad and older parts of the Odyssey ; in a
later section of the latter and in Hesiod they appear in the
usual number of nine. It was not however until later times
that their domains were more exactly determined, as follows
Kalliope ( Sweet- voiced ) holds as muse of heroic song
and elegy a writing-tablet and style; Kleio ( Glorifier ),
as muse of warlike song and history, a roll ; Euterpe
f Delighter ), as muse of lyric, a double flute; Thaleia
( Joy ), as muse of comedy, a comic mask; Melpomene
( Songster ), as muse of tragedy, a tragic mask; Terpsi
chore ( Dance-gladdened ), as muse of choral lyric and
dance, a great lyre; Urania ( Heavenly ), as muse of
astronomical epos and instructive poetry in general, a globe ;
Erato ( Charming ), as muse of amorous song, a small
lyre; finally Polymnia ( She of many hymns ) practises
ritual song and dance, and therefore appears veiled and
cloaked. From the mimic dance practised in some places
during the ritual, the connection of the Muses with the
pantomimus may have afterwards developed.

Moral. 43. On the other hand, the Horai, as their
name tells us, were representatives of the seasons (wpai). As
men in older times distinguished only three seasons, there are
three Horai corresponding to these three divisions, and typified
as blooming maidens. In Attica indeed only two were known
Thallo ( Blossoming one ) and Karpo ( Fruit-bringer ).
In Homer they open and close the gate of heaven, that is,
they lead the clouds hither and away again ; and in later times
also they are accounted bestowers of rain and dew. In art
the regularity of their return was expressed by representing
them as engaged in dance ; but at the same time it caused
them to be regarded as protectresses of order, whence they
were elsewhere styled Eunomia ( Lawfulness ), Dike
( Right ), and Eirene ( Peace ). Eirene however was
much worshipped in Athens also ; her bronze statue, the
creation of Kephisodotos, stood above the market-place. She
held here the child Plutos ( Wealth ) on her arm; for

22 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

wealth thrives in peace. An imitation of this work is to be
found in Munich.

The mother of these Horai is Themis ( Law ), who
often bore the by-name Soteira ( Saviour ), and possessed
sanctuaries in Athens, Delphoi, Thebes, Olympia, and
Trozen. She was conceived as a woman of severe and grave
aspect, with the horn of plenty and the balance as symbol of
deliberative justice.

II. Qe, Demeter and Kore:Bleuslnlan Mysteries.
44. Gaia or Ge ( Earth ) is the broad-bosomed great
mother of all, who bears men, animals, and plants ; she was
worshipped in Athens as Kurotrophos ( Fosterer of youth ),
and here, as often elsewhere, connected with Zeus the be-
stower of fruitfulness. But because she takes back into her
bosom all that has died, she is at the same time a death-
goddess ; she knows the secrets of the realm of the dead that
lies within the earth, and hence she was questioned as an
oracle-goddess over rifts in the ground which seemed to lead
down into that realm, especially at Aigai in Achaia ; the
real belief was probably that she sent up the dead themselves
to be questioned. Later indeed her oracles were often
supplanted by those of Apollon.

As Kurotrophos she is seated, holding children and fruits in
her lap, while kine and flocks graze at her feet. Far more
often however she is conceived as a gigantic woman, with
the upper body more rarely the head alone rising up from
the earth ; and in this form she usually hands over her son
Erichthonios to the care of Athena. In later times she is
couched, with a horn of plenty in her hand, upon the earth ;
and this form of representation was copied in the personi
fications of individual countries, islands, and cities, the last of
which are often more exactly designated by a rampart-crown.

45. Among the goddesses of the receptive fertility of
earth Demeter ( Earth-Mother, from p.rrrtip} y the guardian
of the corn that serves as man s chief nourishment, stands in
particularly high esteem. Her supposed parents are Kronos,
the sun-god ripening the fruit of the fields, and Rhea, who in

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 23

her character is closely connected with her. Her by-names
Chloe ( Green-yellow ), Karpophoros, Sito, and lulo
( Bestower of fruit, corn, and sheaves ) mark her out as
protectress of the cornfield, as does the fact that offerings
were made to her of the first-fruits of the harvest.

In Homer too the fair-tressed Demeter, the spouse of
Zeus worshipped in the Thessalian Pyrasos ( wheatland ),
is only goddess of the cultivation of corn, so that as a rule she
seems to dwell not on Olympos but in the arable field ; and
she is similarly represented in the sacred hymn containing her
legend which was composed before the age of Solon in
Attica.

46. This hymn relates that the daughter of Demeter and
Zeus, Kore, was gathering spring flowers in company with
the Okeaninai or daughters of Okeanos ( fountain-nymphs )
on a meadow which according to later story lay near Enna
in Sicily. As amongst these she was plucking the death-
flower of the narcissus, the earth suddenly opened ; Hades,
the lord of the nether world, arose therefrom and ravished
away Kore from the circle of her playmates. Without touch
ing food her mother sought her with torches in her hands for
nine days until she learned from Hekate or Helios who it was
that had carried her off. When Zeus refused her prayer for
the restoration of her daughter, she hid herself in wrath at
Eleusis and stopped all growth of corn. Not until Zeus in
consequence of this had determined that Kore should spend
but one-third of each year in the nether world did she return
to Olympos and bestow again fruitfulness on the corn. The
denial of complete restoration is explained by the story that
Kore had accepted from her husband and eaten the pip of a
pomegranate, a symbol of fertilisation.

47. This tale was later interpreted as a picture of the
growth of the seed-corn ; but among all Indogermans we
actually find the notion of a close connection between child
and corn, between human procreation and the cornfield s
fertility, and hence the attempt was made to conjure up the
latter by symbolic acts of apparent indecency which strictly

24 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

referred to the former. For this reason, according to Cretan
legend, lasion begot Plutos (i. e. foison, wealth) by Demeter
in the thrice-ploughed field ; and on the other hand
Demophon, the frail little son of King Keleos of Eleusis,
thrives like the seed-corn under the goddess care.

48. Obviously kindred to Demophon is another Eleu-
sinian foster-son of Demeter, the hero Triptolemos ( Thrice-
plougher ), who was worshipped as first apostle of agriculture
and founder of the Eleusinian cult. Demeter sent him abroad
on her own car drawn by snakes, equipping him with tools
of husbandry and seed-corn, to teach men agriculture and the
gentler moral life and political order that spread in its train.
Demeter herself was hence praised as Thesmophoros (< Law
giver ), especially at the feast of the Tkesmopboria, celebrated
in the month of sowing, Pyanopsion.

49. She had her chief seat at Eleusis near Athens,
where she was worshipped in both public and privy celebrations
( Mysteries ) with Kore ( the Maid ), her daughter by
Zeus, and with the young lacchos, who is probably the god
Dionysos-Bacchos or Sabazios introduced from Athens into
this cult. lacchos was here accounted a son sometimes of
Demeter, sometimes of Kore and Underground Zeus or
Hades-Pluton, who also had here from earliest times a temple
next to a cavern. Pluton and Kore are in inscriptions here
always termed the God and the Goddess ; mother and
daughter again are described together as the Worshipful
Ones or the Mistresses.

50. Every year in Boedromion (September October)
the people of Athens marched along the sacred road to
Eleusis in festal procession, in which corn-sheaves were borne
in thanks for the vouchsafed harvest. At Eleusis was held
in the darkness of night a round-race with torches, which in
all probability referred originally to the renewal of light in
the spring, but was commonly interpreted by the story of
the goddess herself seeking her ravished daughter by torch
light. To the initiated (mystai} were shown the holy symbols
of the goddess, and to remind them of her grace to mankind

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE S

in bestowing corn they were presented after a long fast with
a draught or gruel of water and meal seasoned with calamint,
in which form undoubtedly the gifts of Demeter had been
enjoyed in earliest times (compare the puts of the Romans).
Finally they poured out water, as rain-magic, and exclaimed
while gazing up to heaven uc ("rain! ") and while looking
down upon the earth KVC ("conceive ! ")

51. The performances however which later raised the
Eleusinian Mysteries above all other communions only
developed after the time of Solon and the Peisistratids, and
were a result of the desire to give a more cheerful form to the
idea of the soul s existence after death than that which had
hitherto prevailed. From this age onward the main object was
certainly to assure the initiated of a happy life in the next
world. The belief in this was probably aroused by represent
ing the wandering of a dead man through the terrors of the lower
world ; at the same time the Hierophant declared which way
was to be taken and by what incantations the dangers were
to be warded off, in order to finally arrive in safety at the fields
of bliss, which were perhaps shown as the concluding picture.
The initiation of itself vouchsafed this comforting prospect;
a moral life was by no means demanded as preliminary con
dition, hence no influence in raising morality can be attributed
to the Mysteries. As a prelude to these Great Mysteries were
held in Athens itself the Little Mysteries in the * Flower-
Month Anthesterion (February March) ; in these the
members of the community who were to be initiated in the
autumn went through a preliminary consecration.

52. In Arkadia Demeter was connected with Poseidon
Hippios or Phytalmios ; and her daughter was there styled
Despoina, ( Mistress. The latter, as spouse of Hades, has the
name Persephone ( desolating slayer ?); she is the grey
death-goddess and queen of the nether world, whilst in the
Mysteries she seems, in consequence of her legend, to have
been glorified as a comforting example of blissful life in the
world below and of resurrection. In earlier art no fixed
representation of Demeter has been developed ; she is how-

26 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

ever always figured as motherly and fully clad. As typical
attributes she holds wheat-ears and the poppy, a sceptre or
a torch. Her daughter is only distinguished from her by
youthful girlish form; both are often found enthroned or
standing side by side.

III. Athena, Hephaistos, Prometheus, Hestia.
53. Athena ( Adrjvr], AOrjvaia, A9rjva) was from earliest
ages worshipped almost everywhere in Greece and the colonies ;
her cults cannot be traced emerging one from another. More
than any other deity she appears from the beginning as a
fully developed moral personality; she is goddess of the battle
and council, as well as of all skill in art ( A. epydvrj), but
especially of weaving and navigation, and hence is protect
ress of cities in which these arts were tended ( A. TroAia s,
iroXtoiS^os). In the Aiolic and Ionic stocks she is often con
nected with Poseidon, among the Dorians with Zeus. Most
of all she was worshipped in the city bearing her name,
Athens, on whose citadel Poseidon-Erechtheus stood by her
side as an almost equally respected god of the land. Here
was shown the olive-tree which in the contest for lordship
she had made to shoot forth as her gift from the earth by
a blow of her spear, near to the salt spring raised up by
the trident of her rival. Above the latter arose later the
Ionic building of the Erechtheion ; and immediately by its
side, over against her olive-tree, stood the old temple of
Athena Polias with her wood-carven statue, which legend
declared to have fallen from heaven.

54. This statue, like all old representations of the god
dess, was a Palladion, that is, an upright wooden figure with
the spear brandished for assault ( A. 7rpo/x,a^o9), and was
clothed with a real garment (j>eplos} made every year anew
by the noblest women of Athens. On the same citadel, by
the road leading up to it, Athena had as Nike a small Ionic
temple, now almost built up again from its ruins, and an altar
as Hygieia. In worship these places always stood in the
highest respect ; but in outward splendour and artistic value
they were far surpassed by the mighty Doric Parthenon, the

Demeter. British Museum.

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 29

building of which was begun in the year 447 B.C. at the order
of Perikles by Iktinos, and which was adorned with sculpture
by Pheidias.

55. Erechtheus, who later is also called Erichthonios,
appears as a by-name of Poseidon ; in the Iliad however he
is still an earth-born king of the Attic land. Athena
takes him as a child under her care from his mother, the
Earth, and hands hina over, concealed in a basket, to the
charge of the Dew-sisters Aglauros, Herse ( Dew ), and
Pandrosos ( All-dew ). Despite the prohibition of the
goddess the two former open the basket, but are seized with
madness at the sight of the snake-shaped babe, and hurl
themselves down from the rock of the citadel (a reference
perhaps to springs and watercourses). Later Erechtheus-
Erichthonios was believed to be incarnated in the sacred
snake of the Akropolis kept in the Erechtheion a proof that
he was originally a god dwelling in the depths of earth,
and causing both the fertility of the land and death (com
pare 3 f.).

56. His father was reputed to be Hephaistos, who was
venerated in the same place. To the latter and to Athena in
common were held the exceedingly ancient Chalkeia ( Smith-
feast ), in which the invention of the plough and the birth of
Erechtheus were celebrated. Athena again was thanked at
the Procharisteria, in company with the goddesses of Eleusis,
for the germination of the seed ; and in the same way she
was entreated to avert the heat of summer at the Skirophoria,
in which the priest of Erechtheus held over himself a large
white sunshade. At the same season young girls at the
Arrhephoria (Errhephoria or Ersephoria, festival of dew-
bearing ) carried veiled statues from the temple of Athena
Polias down into the Gardens of Aphrodite and took
others thence back into the citadel.

57. The Kallynteria was a festival of temple-purification,
while at the Plyntma the garments and the wooden statue of
the goddess herself were brought down to the sea and
washed. As tutelary goddess of husbandry Athena was also

30 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

honoured by solemn ploughing at the foot of the citadel in
the beginning of sowing-time, and above all by the ancient
harvest-festival of the Panatbenaia from the 24th to the 2Qth
Hekatombaion (beginning of August), which from the age
of Peisistratos was celebrated with especial splendour every
five years. A torch race, competitions of musicians and
dancers, and races of warships were held in it. The chief
day of the festival was on the 2 8th, the birthday of the
goddess ; on it she was presented with the new robe (peplos]
embroidered by Athens noblest women, which during the
solemn procession through the city was fixed like a sail on a
car made in the shape of a ship. Priests, old men, women,
maidens, and the whole male population capable of bearing
arms accompanied it with a display of the utmost pomp up
the Akropolis to the goddess old temple. The magnificent
reliefs on the frieze of the cella of the Parthenon even at this
day bring this procession before our eyes.

58. As old and widespread as these religious conceptions
is the tale of Athena s birth from the head of Zeus, which
Hephaistos or another god split open with the blow of an
axe. With a loud shout of victory she springs forth from it
fully armed. This is plainly a representation of the storm-
cloud split asunder by the lightning ; in Crete Athena was
actually reputed to have sprung forth from a cloud burst
open by Zeus.

59. This physical meaning is further implied in the
legend of a demi-goddess who originally was very closely akin
to her, the Gorgo Medusa ( the observant one with awful
glances ) , to whom later legend added two immortal sisters.
The Gorgon s garb is black as the storm-cloud, her fiery
glance petrifies, as the lightning s stroke stupefies or slays man ;
her roar is the rumble of thunder ; wings bear her through
the air. When Medusa s head is cut off, there springs from
her body the giant Chrysaor ( Gold-Sword ), the golden-
glistening lightning, and the winged horse Pegasos, the
thunder-cloud, the blow of whose hoof (lightning) makes to
gush forth on Helikonthe Muses spring Hippokrene ( Horse-

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 3*

Fountain ) that inspires all poets. After having served
Bellerophon, Pegasos carries in heaven the thunderbolts of
Zeus. The Gorgon s head Athena wears on her aigis ( 30),
which belongs to her as well as to her father Zeus.

60. As inventor and guardian of the crafts of spinning
and weaving she transforms the skilful Lydian webster
Arachne ( Spider ), who dares to enter into contest with
her, into a spider. Once she had come to be accounted the

Medusa Rondanini. Munich.

inventor of this craft, which is of such importance in a simple
society, many other discoveries of the same kind were also
ascribed to her. This is probably the reason that she has
developed into the goddess of wisdom generally, and thus
into the patroness of science ; hence in Hesiod Metis
( Shrewdness ) appears as her mother. But this idea may
also have been helped into life by the conception of her
brightly gleaming glance (yXav/cwTrts) 1 a property betokening
1 For the same reason the owl (y\av) is her sacred bird.

3 - GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

in man intellectual life, and no doubt belonging to her origin
ally from her connection with the lightning and perhaps
also by that of the soul s fiery nature ; for on the same
ground the divine smiths and fire-gods, Prometheus and
Hephaistos, were credited with having moulded men and
inspired them with life.

61. Her ideal representation in art was the creation of
Pheidias, who modelled not only the type of the so-called
Athena Promachos in the colossal bronze statue l set up in the
open air upon the Akropolis, but also that of the sfthena
Parthenos ( Maiden ) in gold and ivory, holding Nike
( Victory ) in her right hand, for the Parthenon. She
appears always as severe and grave, calm and with an ex
pression of clear intelligence, regularly in a long garment, and
often characterised by the aigis worn over it.

62. Hephaistos, who in worship and legend was closely
connected at Athens with Athena, is a god of fire, who is at
times completely identified with this his element. He is the
patron of smiths and all metal-workers in general, and it was
evidently their guild which raised him to such high esteem in the
busy industrial city of Athens. From this guild undoubtedly
arose also the ward of the Hephaistiadai, where he had a
sanctuary. Beside the Chalkeia (see 56), he and Athena
were honoured in Athens by the family festival of the
Apaturla ; and for him alone were held the Hephaisteia with
a torch-race in the Kerameikos, the artisans quarter, a custom
that was also practised elsewhere. He was further invoked
as protector against conflagrations.

63. His second and perhaps his oldest place of worship
is Lemnos, where the earth-fire blazing on the top of mount
Mosychlos gained for him universal adoration. He was
here accounted incidentally a god of healing ; but he is above
all a smith-god. By his side stands his teacher or comrade
Kedalion ; when later his smithy was localised in the vol
canoes of Sicily and the Lipari Islands, the Kyklopes were

1 The design was probably carried out by one of his pupils.

Varvakeion Athena. A them.

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 35

also joined with him as assistants. As the lame often practised
the smith s craft, its god was conceived as lame and possessed
of powerful arms and feeble legs. In general he was com
pletely equipped with the costume and attributes of this craft,
and hence depicted in a workman s short garment with hammer,
tongs, and cap.

64. Legend related that Hephaistos was born of Hera
in a quarrel with Zeus (i.e. in the storm), but that owing to
his lameness he was thrown down by his mother into the sea
and there tended by the sea-goddesses Thetis and Eurynome ;
or Zeus was said to have hurled him down upon the island of
Lemnos because he supported his mother in a dispute. Both
stories signify the descent of the heavenly fire upon the earth ;
and indeed flame may actually have become known to man in
the first instance as lightning-fire. Led back by Dionysos
into heaven, he forges weapons and ornaments for the gods.
In accordance with the idea that love is a fiery power, his
wife in the Iliad is Charis, the goddess of grace and of spring,
and later always the love-goddess Aphrodite herself.

65. Prometheus ( Forethought ), very closely akin to
Hephaistos himself, was worshipped in his company at Athens,
by the side of Athena. He embodies the skill, shrewdness,
and cunning which naturally develop in the handicraftsman.
Thus he stole fire from Zeus, designing as irup<opos to
quicken into life with it the men he had moulded of clay,
and to give it as a boon to them. Though earlier he had
been a friend of Zeus, he was chained in punishment of this
offence to a rock in the Caucasus, and tortured by an eagle
eating out his liver. Hephaistos again moulded the first woman
Pandora ( One with gifts from all gods ), through whom all
evils came upon the men created by Prometheus.

66. Hestia ( Hearth ), the representative of the hearth-
fire, is still more closely identified with her element ; hence
in her worship she is scarcely distinguished from it. She
indeed takes part in all sacrifices in which fire is needful, but
it is seldom that she is actually represented as a veiled
maiden in long robes, with a bowl or sceptre.

36 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

IV. Apollon, Artemis, and Hekate. 67. Of all

Grecian gods Apollon had, after Zeus, the highest religious
honours in the largest number of places ; his sphere of dominion
extends to nearly all departments of nature and human life.
As far as we can trace him back, he appears as a potent
moral personality conceived in thoroughly human form, a
power restricted to no particular phenomenon of nature, but
equally active in all. The origins alike of his character and
of his worship are veiled in obscurity, although some ritual
usages indicate for the latter the valley of Tempe in Thessaly.

68. In the first instance he is a god of oracle ; the most
highly esteemed place of prophecy in the whole of Greece is
his temple at Delphoi, which is already mentioned in the
Iliad. He had similar places of worship at Didymoi near
Miletos, Klaros near Kolophon, Abai in Phokis, and in many
other spots. The name Klaros suggests that at one time
oracles were here given by means of lots (Doric KAapos =
/<X^pos ; compare 12). In Delphoi, which was also called
Pytho or * place of questions, the priestess styled Pythia
( she who hears ? compare tirvOofjirjv) drank from a sacred
spring and sat down chewing laurel-leaves upon a tripod ; then
whilst apparently in a state resembling drunkenness she uttered
significant words which were interpreted by a priest standing
by her side and cast into the form of an answer. Thus the
cult of Apollon has close relations with that of Dionysos
the god of drunkenness, who was also much worshipped in
Delphoi.

69. As the cause of prophetic inspiration, Apollon becomes
patron of all seers and singers, especially as his spoken oracles
were commonly couched in the form of verse. He is hence
the leader of the Muses, and receives as regular attribute the
lyre invented by Hermes. On the other hand, the fact of the
oracle being uttered above a rift in the earth indicates that the
Earth or the dead were in earlier times questioned at Delphoi.
This is confirmed by legend, according to which Apollon on
taking possession of this place slew the dragon Python, which
from its connection with Delphoi was also called Delphyne ;

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 37

for this snake is to be regarded as the embodiment of the earth-
dwelling spirit of the dead which was formerly questioned
here (3). The festival games of the Pythla were later
looked upon as a celebration of this victory.

70. He stands in equally close relations with the earth
in his quality as guardian of the growth of vegetation on the
pastures ( A. vo/xos), of cattle-breeding, and of husbandry.
He is himself the possessor of herds of kine ; his brother
Hermes directly after his birth steals them from him, but
is forced to restore them. Aristaios ( best one ) , a the
representative of tilth and of the rearing of cattle and bees, is
accounted his son. In the districts at the foot of the range of
Taygetos and in the neighbouring Sparta he was worshipped as
Kapveios ( ram-god ), and the Karneia, a festival of the
harvest and vintage, were held there in his honour. The
same meaning underlies the Thargelia at Athens, the Hyakinthia
at Sparta, and the Delia in Delos. In the first-named, his
seat, the holy tripod, was brought at times from Delphoi into
his Athenian Pythion on the Ilissos, and two men (in later
times criminals) were slaughtered as an expiatory offering.

71. In Amyklai and Sparta his favourite Hyakinthos
(the youth ) was worshipped by his side. He was said
to have killed Hyakinthos accidentally in throwing a quoit ;
originally the latter is probably a god of death and fertility
supplanted by Apollon. In general Apollon was accounted
the patron of youth and of its exercises in the wrestling-school
( A. evayuvtos) ; he even became the tribal god (Trarpwos,
ap^r/yenjs) of the whole Ionic race, and led them in their
wanderings to their colonies. On the other hand he was also
a god of death for men and beasts, and thus is depicted as a
terrible sender of pestilence at the beginning of the Iliad.
His bolts slay dogs, mules, and men : like a cunning huntsman
he never fails to strike his mark. Hence he is termed the
Smiter from afar (e/carq/Jo Aos, e/caepyo s, CKO/TOS), and
looked upon both as the god of oaths who takes awful

1 There are some grounds also for connecting this name with the
Latin arista, <ar of corn.

38 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

vengeance for all perjury and as the potent helper in the fray
SoSouo.

72. If however he sends death, he can likewise ward it off
as soon as he has been appeased by expiations and sacrifices.
Hence he is invoked as averter of evil (dAet/caKos), saviour
(cram;/)) and healer (Haidv, Ilai^wv, IIaia>v) ; and Ask-
lepios the physician of the gods is accounted his son. So he
is the chief representative of all purification and atonement
( A. Kaflapo-ios, $oi/3os); for he can grant safety from the
pursuit of wrathful souls. The laurel-bough with which the
sinner in need of atonement is swept and the wolf, the type
of the flying manslayer to whom he offers shelter and expi
ation, are assigned to him in this quality ( A. AUKIOS, AuKCios).

Apollcn manifests himself as saviour and protector from
danger and death by sea as well ; hence he was much
worshipped by seamen and styled SeX</>tvtos, because the
dolphin accompanies ships on the open seas in good weather,
and on this account was looked upon as its harbinger and a
friend of the seafarer. In the well-known story one of these
creatures rescues Arion, who himself is perhaps to be regarded
as a representative of the god graciously guiding shipmen on
their way.

73. The story of his birth is native to Delos, the second
great seat of his worship. He is a son of Zeus and Leto
(in Latin Latona), and twin brother of Artemis. Pursued
by the hate of jealous Hera, his mother, after long wanderings
hither and thither, had at length found shelter and security
upon this island, which itself had hitherto been tossed about
upon the waves. Soon after his birth he slays with his arrows
the dragon Python in Delphoi ( 69) and the giant Tityos
who pursued his mother, as well as the sons of Niobe for
their mother s offence ( 125). The Hyperboreioi, a fabulous
people enjoying eternal peace, send like his other worshippers
festal embassies and gifts to Delos. Apollon himself spends the
winter with them ; in the spring he is called back again by
prayer to Delos and Delphoi. This absence of the god
during the winter, together with the fact that all his festivals

Apollo Belvedere. Rome.

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 41

fall in the summer, has mainly led men to explain him as a
sun-god, an interpretation which appears as early as the fifth
century B.C., and seems to suit well the conception of the god
as Delphinios and as dwelling in Delos.

74. In art Apollon meets us as the ideal figure of a fully
grown slender youth, beardless, with long curling hair. Usually
he is naked ; only a small cloak (chlamys} is thrown over his
shoulder or left arm. As attribute he carries a bow and
quiver, and this was probably the case too with the Belvedere
statue. A variety of this type, the resting Apollo, with the
hand placed over the head, probably goes back to Praxiteles.

As leader of the Muses again he is figured with the long
Ionic robe * (chiion), the lyre, and laurel crown, a type which
was created, at any rate in its more agitated form, by Skopas
or Praxiteles.

75. Artemis (in Doric and Boiotian "Apra/xts) is a
goddess of fruitfulness and death much worshipped by the
whole race, especially in the Peloponnesos. Originally she is
doubtless closely akin to Kore-Persephone and Gaia. In
Peloponnesos she was celebrated at spring festivals, as goddess
of earth s blessings, not only by the fountains, rivers, and
swamps on which fertility depends ("Apre/us Xi/xvarts and
eXet a) and on the tilled meadow-lands of the plain, but
also in the luxuriant mountain-forests of Taygetos ; for
through her thrive not merely vegetation but likewise the
young of animals and man ( A. TraiSorpo^os) . She protects
wild and domestic animals ; the hind which appears in art by
her side, as well as the male and female goat, are sacred to
her ( A. xvayia). As a bold huntress she usually carries a bow
and arrows, with which she can send death to women also,
especially in childbirth ( A. IXci dvia).

76. To the death-goddess men were at one time offered
as victims, as the legend of Iphigeneia shews ; and as a
substitute for them at Sparta boys in later times were whipped
in honour of Artemis opOia until they bled, in order thereby

1 This continued as the professional dress of the musician when
it had ceased to be the Ml dress of the Ionic gentleman.

42 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

to satisfy the ancient demand for blood. In the same way as
she brings death she can also bestow salvation, victory, and
glory in battle ; hence men invoked her as o-wrapa and CVK\UI.
In worship she usually stands alone ; but she is also variously
associated with other bestowers of fruitfulness such as Zeus,
Dionysos, Poseidon, Apollon Karneios, Pan, Demeter, Kore,
and Aphrodite.

77. Sometimes, like the kindred deity Hekate, she
carries a torch in her hand ( A. o-eXacr^opos). This is perhaps
the death-torch with which, as Hye/xovr/, she leads the dead
down into the nether world ; but on its account she is often
explained to be a moon-goddess, and this is borne out by the
fact that she was worshipped, as "Aprc/us vovprjvia., on the
appearance of the new moon. From this point of view she is
Apollon s twin sister, the virgin daughter of Zeus and Leto, and
worshipped by Ionian seafarers, who punishes with the utmost
severity all breaches of chastity. The hunter Aktaion, the
son of Aristaios, having by chance surprised her and her
attendant nymphs at the bath, she changes him into a stag in
order that his own hounds may tear him to pieces ; and for a
like reason she slays the giant huntsman Orion, who is raised
to heaven as a constellation.

78. The many-breasted goddess of Ephesos, viewed as
the nurturer of all nature, is so like this protectress of the
beasts of woodland and field that she too may be termed
Artemis, although originally she, like Rhea and Kybele,
seems to be only a locally modified form of the great maternal
goddess of nature and war, Ma or Ammas ( Mother ), who
was worshipped by the Indogermanic inhabitants of Asia
Minor.

79. The nymphs attendant as huntresses on Artemis had
counterparts in the servants of this Asiatic goddess entitled
Amazones, figures obviously similar to Ma herself, and dwelling
on the southern shore of the Black Sea by the Thermodon
and Iris in Pontos, while Ma had her chief seat in the same
region at Komana on the Iris. Their legend however was
perhaps carried into this region from Boiotia, for there is

Artemis of Versailles. Louvre.

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 4 S

evidence of a brook Thermodon near Tanagra and of
Amazons graves and camps in many other spots both of
Boiotia and of the neighbouring districts ; the Amazons were
moreover reputed to be the daughters of the Theban deities
Ares and Harmonia. They fought as bold horsewomen with
the Corinthian hero Bellerophon, the Boiotian and Argive
Herakles, the Trozenian and Attic Theseus, and Achilleus,
who was venerated in Thessaly, Boiotia, Corinth, Elis, and
Lakonia. Art accordingly depicted them usually as strong
and beautiful horsewomen with short garments and armed with
a shield hollowed out at the side, often too the double axe.
Pheidias and Polykletos made also statues of a single Amazon
wearied by the toil of battle. That their legend is based on
some recollection of a former rule of women among the races
worshipping them cannot be maintained with any certainty.

80. In Athens, Delos, and Epidauros Artemis bore the
by-name Exa-n;, S miter from afar, and thus she is in
character obviously near akin to the independently developed
Hekate, the daughter of the Titan Perses ( resplendent
one ) and of Asterie ( Star-maiden ). Hekate was chiefly
worshipped in Caria and the bordering districts of Asia
Minor. In Greece proper a real worship is found only on
the eastern coast ; she was especially honoured in Aigina by
a secret cult or mysteries. She was there invoked to aid
against madness, which as mistress of the ghosts causing it
she can dispel as well as send. When a soul at birth unites
with the body, she is near at hand, and also when it departs
thence, at death and burial. She therefore haunts graves;
but she also dwells in the hearth, for by it the house-master
used to be buried in earlier times. On moonlight nights she
herself appears in ghostly form at the crossways ( E. r/aioSms,
Trivia), attended by her rout, the troop of restless ghosts, and
by her dogs, which are also to be regarded as embodying
souls ( 20). To soothe and ward off Hekate the remnants of
purificatory offerings were left for her at the end of every
month by the crossways, in the same way as the souls of the
dead were appeased at the end of the year.

46 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

81. She is the deity of ghost-raising and of magic in
general ; hence she becomes mother of the sorceresses Kirke
and Medeia ( the wise woman ). She comes also into
the closest relations to Selene, the personification of the
moon ; for the moon can change its form a fact that figures
prominently in all sorcery and to the night belong all
the ghostly apparitions of witchcraft. In older times she is
represented as of one form, fully clad, and with two burning
torches in her hands ; towards the end of the fifth century
B.C. however Alkamenes figured her for the entrance of the
Athenian citadel with three bodies (rpiTrpotroTros, triformis),
placing them back to back in such a way that one of them
like the waxing moon always looked towards the left and
the second like the waning moon towards the right, while
that between them fronted the spectator in full face like the
full moon. The bowl and flagon assigned to her point
perhaps to the drink-offering presented to the dead.

V. Hermes, the Satyrs, and Pan. 82. Arkadia,
mountainous and shut in on all sides by chains of lofty hills,
was tenanted from earliest times, as it is to this day, by
herdsmen who cared for nothing more than the welfare of
their herds. Hence they paid especial worship to the deities
which bestowed on their sheep and goats nourishment and
growth, and furthered their increase. Hermes, who himself
bears the by-name Arkas> the Arkadian, has here his home.
He is said to have been born in a cavern of Mount Kyllene,
on the summit of which he had from the oldest times a
sanctuary ; perhaps the story is a memory of his former
connection with the gods of the depths of earth. In the
districts lying round the mountain, particularly in Pheneos
and Stymphalos, festivals with competitions were held in
his honour ; hence he was looked upon as their patron
( E. dywvios, cvaycovios), and found adoration in all race
courses and wrestling-schools. He even developed into
the model of the skilful (e&coXos, Sta/cropos?) pupil of the
wrestling-school, and thence also into the bestower of grace

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 47

83. In his old places of worship however he was still
chiefly represented as the good shepherd, with the ram under
his arm (/cpio^>opos), and as such he has come down to us in
many works of art. And as he leads home the herds and
lost sheep, so as evdStos, oSio?, or fjyep.6vio<i he guides way
farers on unknown paths. Stone-heaps with pillars in them,
which served as fingerposts, were hence sacred to him, so that
the latter were often adorned with a head of Hermes, or
on cross-roads even with three or four heads, and were called
hcrmai or herma ia.

84. In early times all wealth consisted in herds, and
cattle even served as commercial standard (compare Lat.
pecunid) ; thus Hermes vo/xios and cTrt/x^Xios developed into
the bestower of prosperity and fortune in general. He figured
early in Sekyon near to Kyllene, in Athens, Sparta, and
many other cities, as patron of market-traffic ( E. dyo/mios,
e/u,7roXatos), and thus became the god of tradesfolk, who
spread his worship in all quarters, and even brought it to
Rome ; here he was confused with the old Roman deity of
merchandise, Mercurius.

85. Regarded thus, he later bears the purse as token. On
the other hand he carries as herdsman s god the hooked stick
to catch the cattle, which was used also as a traveller s staff.
Wayfarers and pedlars are in times of undeveloped commerce
the natural heralds and messengers, hence the herdsman s stick
passes over into the herald s staff (K-rjpvKuov,caduceus^. After
the transformation of Hermes into the god of luck this finally
becomes the magical wishing-rod which raises treasure and
bestows fortune ; it is then represented as a twisted forked
twig or a snaky staff. As a wayfarer Hermes wears the
traveller s hat (petasos], which like his shoes is usually
furnished with wings to indicate his swiftness.

86. As herdsmen sometimes stole the herds of others, so
Hermes on the very evening after his birth drove off from a
meadow at the foot of Olympos the fifty white golden-horned
kine of the gods, cunningly effaced their trail, and hid them
in a cavern. Thus he is accounted the patron of thieves and

48 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

a pattern of their cunning and shrewdness ( E. 80X105). In
this connection the story ran that he stole his arrows from
Apollon, and at the bidding of Zeus carried off lo in the
form of a cow from the watcher Argos ( 126) ; here again
the theft of kine by herdsmen is the basis of the tale. To their
god was also ascribed the invention of the herdsmen s pipe
(avXos, (Tvpiy) and thence of the lyre.

87. As guide on unknown paths ( E. TTO/XTTOS, Tro/ATraios),
Hermes becomes the leader of departed souls in their journey
to the nether world ( E. ^XOTTO/XTTO S) as well as of their
kindred, Dreams (r^yrjrwp ovupwv] ; here and there he him
self is worshipped as a subterranean god ( E. x0oVios)j hence
he may well have been in his original character a god ruling
over souls.

88. When he was inserted into the circle of the Olympian
deities he was made the son of the father of the gods, Zeus,
and of Maia ( Mother ), the nymph of Mount Kyllene, and
became the messenger of the gods, a quality which suits his
former character, and already appears in the foreground in the
later parts of the Iliad.

By older art he is commonly figured as a mature man with
a peaked beard, but in works of Ionic origin often as a youth.
Subsequently the latter is the standing representation ; he is
then clad only in a chlamys or is quite naked, as he appears
in the magnificent statue of Praxiteles dug up at Olympia.
The child on his arm here is the young Dionysos, whom he is
bringing to the nymphs to be nursed.

89. With the herdsman s god Hermes is associated his
son Pan, likewise an Arkadian, and the Satyroi, sprites much
like Pan, and worshipped by the Argive peasantry busied
with cattle-breeding and the cultivation of the vine. The
Argives assigned to these gnome-like spirits of earth s fruitful-
ness the form of a goat, for this necessarily seemed to them
the animal of chief procreative power. In passing over to
human form the Satyrs preserved from this earlier stage the
goat s ears and little tail as their characteristic token, as well
as their connection with wine.

Seated Hermes. Naples.

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 51

90. As Pan ( the grazer ) was like them represented
in the form of a goat, he may well be regarded as the type
of these same spirits of fertility, remodelled after their own
likeness by the Arkadian herdsmen into the figure of a divine
herdsman. Thus it is especially his function to make the
herds increase and thrive. Like the herdsmen themselves he
dwells in summer in the caves of the mountains, and in winter
goes down with them into the plain ; in the hot hour -of
midday he rests, at eventide he blows the shepherd s flute or
syrinx ; his secondary occupations are hunting, fishing, and
the craft of war. It is he too who inspires herds, and hence
armies also, with the sudden panic terror that drives them
headlong in senseless flight. He is the lover of the moon-
goddess Selene, probably because moonshine gives to the
herds a suitable dewy pasture.

From Arkadia, where with Hermes he held almost the
first rank, his worship spread through Argolis to Athens, to
Parnassos, and as far as Thessaly. Later his similar character,
probably through his connection with the Satyrs watching over
the culture of the vine, brought him into the train of Dionysos.
Finally the philosophers, giving a new interpretation to his
name (TO irav = the All), and identifying him with the
great goat-shaped god of Mendes in Egypt, made him the
omnipotent ruler and vital spirit of all nature, on whose death
all nature s life perishes likewise. He was represented as
bearded, with the legs, tail, ears, and horns of a goat, but
often also as human, and only characterised by a brutish
expression.

VI. Poseidon and his Circle. 91. Most of the
deities of water remained always in the closest connection
with their element ; only a few of them, notably the lord
of the sea Poseidon, and the Silenoi, have grown under
the influence of cult, legend, and art into more distinct
personalities.

Okeanos is a mere personification of the ocean itself, which
flows around the earth like a stream. From him arise
springs, rivers, and seas, and likewise all other things, includ-

52 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

ing the gods themselves a doctrine agreeing with the physical
conceptions of the oldest philosophers, and suggested by the
insular position of Greece. He is hence represented as a
fatherly old man. He dwells with his wife Tethys ( nurse,
grandmother ) on the western border of the earth, without
visiting the congregation of the gods. The aAios yepwv, or
Old Man of the Sea, while resembling Okeanos, is drawn
somewhat more distinctly ; his home is a cavern in the
depths of the sea, and not only does he know all the secrets
of his element, but, like the sea-gods of the Babylonians and
Germans, he possesses in general immeasurable wisdom. But
he who would question him must first overpower him in a
wrestle, and force him, despite his power of assuming like
water itself a variety of shapes, to communicate to him his
knowledge.

From him branched off sea-gods variously named in various
places Nereus ( flowing one ), Proteus ( first-born ),
Phorkys 1 and Triton ( streaming one ), and Glaukos
( resplendent ). The three first are represented in human
shape ; Nereus and Proteus have the gift of prophecy and
self - transformation, while Phorkys with his wife Keto
( sea-monster ) rules over marine and other monsters. On
the other hand the Old Man of the Sea, Glaukos, and
Triton were even later portrayed regularly as compound
beings, in which the body of a fish was joined to a man s
bust. This was probably an imitation of the Babylonian and
Assyrian models of this class of sea-god which the Phoe
nicians and lonians brought into Greece. A like formation
was attributed to river-gods, Centaurs, and Satyrs.

92. By the side of these lower sea-deities stand the
Nereides, daughters of Nereus, who represent the kindly
powers at work in the sea, or, from a more material point of
view, embody the sportive wanton waves, and are figured in
the form of lovely maidens. Especially prominent among
them are Poseidon s wife Amphitrite ( she who flows round

1 There are some technical reasons for connecting this name with
the Sanskrit bfhat ( mighty ).

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 53

about ), Thetis the mother of Achilleus, and Galateia
( the milk-white ), the coy mistress of Polyphemos the
Kyklops.

Akin to them is Ino-Leukothea, who was invoked as
saviour in distress by sea ; for the Nereids themselves are
also called Leukotheai ( white goddesses ) . On the other
hand Ino became a by-form of Aphrodite- Astarte, who bore
sway over the sea ; and in the same way her son Melikertes
was developed out of the sun-god and city-god Melqart of
Tyre. Like the latter he was worshipped as protector of
seafarers, but represented as a child in the arms of his mother,
who is said to have sprung with him in frenzy into the sea,
or as standing upon a dolphin. His by-name Palaimon
( Wrestler ) points to his share in the celebration of the
Isthmian Games. He had a sanctuary near Corinth, which
had been an old seat of Phoenician trade.

93. The destructive power of the perils menacing the
seafarer was on the other hand incarnated in the monsters
Skylla and Charybdis. The former appears as a maiden
from whose body grow out six long necks with hounds
heads, that snatch the oarsmen from ships; Charybdis how
ever is only vaguely described by Homer as a monster that
thrice a day sucks in the tide. Both were later localised in
the Straits of Messina ; but both may have originally had
their seat at the Skyllaian promontory on the eastern coast of
Argolis. At the bottom of the story of Skylla may lie a
sailor s tale of the kraken or devil-fish, which sometimes
grows to a gigantic size ; Charybdis is obviously nothing but
a dangerous whirlpool.

94. Far higher in character than any of these beings is
Poseidon, the lord of the sea, and hence of all waters in
general. He is brother of Zeus and Hades. The emblem
of his might and the weapon with which he can cleave rocks
and carve out valleys in the midst of mountains is the trident,
properly a kind of harpoon which was used by fishers in spear
ing dolphins or tunnies. He is the national god of the
lonians, whose chief pursuits were fishing and seafaring, and

54 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

his son Theseus is their national hero. His worship how
ever is older than that of the latter, for it came with the
Ionian immigration into Asia, where the Pamonla were cele
brated in his honour at the promontory of Mykale as the
festival of the union of all the Ionian colonies. These had in
the mother-country a counterpart in the games at the Isthmus of
Corinth instituted by Sisyphos and Theseus, which originally
were purely Ionic, like the old Amphiktyonia y or religious union,
of Poseidon at Kalauria near Trozen. His sanctuaries how
ever are found scattered around the whole of Peloponnesos
and on other coasts ; he was said to dwell with his wife
Amphitrite in a golden palace in the depths of the sea at
Aigai in Achaia.

95. All springs and streams arise from Okeanos, and
Poseidon is their ruler, obviously because they were imagined
to have an underground connection with the sea that embraces
or sustains (yai^o^os) and permeates the whole land. Earth
quakes were looked upon as due to the motion of these waters
under the earth, and hence Poseidon was described as the
Earth-shaker (ei/voo-iyaios, ivocri^O^v}. Thus he is often
worshipped in the interior of the country, in places where in
land seas, raging rivers, or earthquakes bear testimony to his
power, as was the case in Boiotia, Thessaly, and Lakonia.
Since however he thus represents also the fertilising moisture
arising from springs and rivers, he himself becomes the patron
of vegetation (<in-aA/uos), and hence is associated with
Demeter, Artemis, and Athena.

96. His usual victim and symbol is the horse, the type
of the raging wave. Hence he travels over the sea in a car
drawn by swart horses with golden manes when he sways
waves and winds. In earthquakes again men apparently
thought they heard the rolling of his car as it dashed along
underground ; and thus he also comes into connection with
the nether world. He himself in the form of a horse
(II. iTnnos) begot by an Erinys or Harpy Arion, the
war-horse of Adrastos, or made it spring forth by a blow of
his trident from a rock, in the same way as in his contest

The Latenin Poseidon. Rome.

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 57

with Athena he raised up a salt spring on the Akropolis of
Athens.

Besides the horse, the bull, which embodies the wild power
of the billow, and its reverse the dolphin, which chiefly
appears in a quiet sea, were hallowed and dear to Poseidon.
Art represented him as like Zeus ; but his features display not
so much sublime calm as mighty force, which constitutes his
chief quality. He is moreover figured as the type of the
weather-worn seaman ; his eye looks into the distance, his
beard and hair are roughened by storm. Often too he is
portrayed with his foot planted high up, as fishermen and
sailors are wont to stand, fully clad in earlier times, later with
the upper body naked.

97. Like the billows of the sea, the waves of rushing
rivers by their wild force and their bellowing roar suggested
the idea that in such rivers a mighty bull was at work. Hence
in earlier times river- gods were figured as bulls with a man s
face ; but already in Homer they appear in complete human
shape, and even later art indicates but seldom their nature by
small bulls horns, commonly characterising them by simply
assigning to them an urn. The most revered of them are
Acheloos the opponent of Herakles and Alpheios the lover
of the fountain-nymph Arethusa, who fled from his wooing
through the sea to the peninsula of Ortygia at Syracuse. The
finest statue of a river-god that can be identified with cer
tainty is; that of the Nile in the Vatican.

98. The Silenoi are Phrygian-Ionic gods of rivers and
fountains, whose figure, like those of the Centaurs, was origin
ally compounded of the bodies of a man and a horse. Their
chief representative is the Silenos Marsyas, the god of the
river of that name which rises at Kelainai in Phrygia. As
inventor of Phrygian flute-playing he was said to have chal
lenged the harper Apollon to a contest ; being defeated by
him, he was flayed alive, and his blown skin was hung up by
his fountain in Kelainai. As skins however served to hold
water, it is possible that a skin was originally assigned to him,
as the urn to river-gods, merely to characterise his nature, and

58 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

that the story of the contest is thus to be regarded as a later
fiction to interpret this attribute.

In Athens the Silenoi attendant on Dionysos were confused
with the goat-like Peloponnesian Satyroi, who about the time
of Peisistratos had been introduced from Corinth for the festal
songs and dances of the Great Dionysia.

99. The vivifying power of water was especially embodied
in the figures of the Nymphs, who appear in the form of
young and lightly-clad maidens or women wherever water
exerts this force. This it does most manifestly by springs,
which from the oldest times served as places of worship ; the
springs embodiments, the Naiades, are characterised in detail
by shells or other vessels for drawing water. Thence the
nymphs spread to all places where wealth of water called
forth lush vegetation ; thus the Oreiades were given a
dwelling-place in the woodlands and mountain pastures. In
particular the vital power at work in each single tree was
explained as the activity of a nymph living like a soul within
and with it; she was termed a Dryad ( tree-maiden ), or
Hamadryad ( one bound up with the tree ). According to
this view the nymph lives only as long as the vital power repre
sented by her is at work in the object to which it belongs.
When the spring dries up, when the tree withers, the nymph
dies.

VII. Personifications of the Heavenly Bodies
and other Nature-Deities. 100. The deities embody
ing the sun and moon, Helios and Selene, were daily honoured
everywhere on the rising and setting of their planet by prayer
and greeting. Yet their peculiar ritual of sacrifice was usually
very simple. Helios was held in higher consideration at
Corinth, and above all on the island of Rhodes, where a
brilliant festival, the Halieia, was held in his honour. Here
at the entrance of the harbour was raised to him, about 280
B.C., the bronze statue made by Chares of Lindos, which was
famous as the Colossus of Rhodes. On account of the ap
parent movement of the sun Helios was thought to ride
through the heavens on a glistening car drawn by four swift

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 59

horses ; he himself was portrayed as in the flower of youth,
the long tresses of his hair crowned by a coronet of beams.
By the sea-goddess Klymene he begets Phaethon ( Glis-
tener ), who perishes in the attempt to drive for one day the
car of the sun in place of his father. His milk-white herds
of oxen and sheep, which none may harm, graze in the island
of Thrinakia. In the heliotrope which always turns towards
the sun men saw his mistress Klytia, who was changed into
the flower.

101. Like Helios, Selene plays a quite inferior part in
cult. Sometimes she is associated with him ; and to her, as
to Eos, thanks are chiefly paid for the gift of the nightly dews
promoting nature s growth. In legend her husband or lover
is Endymlon, probably he who has entered into his cave
(evSvco), i.e. the sun-god after his setting, with whom the
moon-goddess unites in the night of the new moon. Accord
ing to the conception of the Eleans, she bears to him fifty
daughters, who embody the fifty months making up the cycle
of the Olympian festival ; in Carian legend again the hunter
or herdsman Endymion sleeps in a cavern of Mount Latmos,
and Selene privily draws near to kiss the beautiful sleeper.

1 02. Of the stars, but few appear in older times as figures
in myth. The morning star, Heosphoros or Phosphoros
( bringer of dawn or < of light, Latin Lucifer], is re
presented as a boy bearing a torch, the brilliant constellation
Orion as a gigantic hunter with upraised club. The latter is
ravished away by Eos and slain by Artemis. His dog is
Seirios ( bright one ), the most brilliant fixed star, on
whose early rising begins the hottest season of the year, the
dog-days. The Bear looks in alarm towards Orion, and
the goddesses of rain, the star-cluster of the Pleiades, flee
from his ambush.

Later each group of stars of especial brilliancy was repre
sented, in imitation of the Babylonians, as a picture, and
brought into connection with the older figures of myths by
stories of transformations.

103. Among the other deities of light the first place is

60 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

taken by Eos or Dawn (Latin Slurora}, the sister of Helios
and Selene. As giver of the morning dews she carries
pitchers in her hands. To denote the brightness of the
break of day she has a saffron-yellow robe, arms and fingers
of rosy splendour, and wings of a brilliant white ; on account
of her speed she is often portrayed as riding on a car. Her
spouse is Tithonos, a brother of Priamos ; her son Memnon
is killed by Achilleus. Like Orion, she carried away
Tithonos as a comely stripling, and obtained for him from
Zeus immortality but not eternal youth ; hence he withers
away by her side and lives a wretched life in a decrepit old
age until, according to later story, he is changed into a cicada.

The speed with which the rainbow casts its span from
heaven to earth makes Iris, who typifies it, the gods mes
senger ; to her therefore pertain great wings, a short garment
of rainbow hue, and the herald s staff (/a/pu/ceiov). In the
older parts of the Iliad she is the messenger of Zeus ; later
her place in his service is taken by Hermes, while she her
self is henceforth an attendant of Hera. As the rainbow was
deemed the harbinger of rain, she was wedded to Zephyros,
the rain-wind.

104. The gods of the winds were conceived in the oldest
times under the form of horses, like the Harpies described
above ( 21), whom they often pursue as enemies or lovers ;
later they appear as widely striding bearded men with wings
on their shoulders and often also on their feet. Sometimes
they are depicted with a double face looking forwards and
backwards, which doubtless refers to the change in the direc
tion of the wind. In earlier ages they were distinguished only
into Boreas (North wind), Zephyros (West wind), Notos
(South wind), and somewhat later Euros (East wind), who
are accounted sons of Astraios ( Starry Heaven ) and Eos
( Dawn ). Like the Harpies, they are by nature robbers;
Boreas in particular ravishes away the lovely Oreithyia, the
daughter of Erechtheus, from the banks of the Ilissos perhaps
a picture of the morning mist swept away by the wind. Their
lord is Aiolos ( Swift ), who dwells on a floating island in

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 61

the far West, and keeps the winds inclosed in a cavern, the
Cave of the Winds.

VIII. Ares and Aphrodite. 105. Ares (compare
dpiwv, apurros, apex?;) was originally the chief god of Thracian
tribes that had forced their way into Thessaly, Boiotia, and
Phokis, and was probably also like Hades a death-god dwelling
in the depths of earth. In his native land human sacrifices were
offered to him. As befitted the character of his worshippers, he
developed into the furious god of war, and in this quality alone
he was allowed entrance into Greece. From his ancient
by-name Eryo&u, which seemingly is connected with the
wild cry of battle, arose his attendant the murderous war-
goddess Enyo (Latin Bellona], and later were associated
with him in the same way Deimos and Phobos, Eris the god
dess of strife (Latin DiteortBa}, and the Keres, the bringers
of death in battle, figured as black women in bloody garb,
who are strictly to be regarded as themselves souls of the
dead. He represents however merely the power of war s
brute violence, and hence must give way before Athena and
her favourites.

1 06. In Greece Ares is reckoned the son of Zeus and
Hera ; and in Thebes, the most important seat of his worship,
his wife is Aphrodite. The latter s place however was
earlier held by the Erinys Tilphossa, a death-goddess and
well-spirit, by whom Ares begot the dragon (his own image)
that dwelt in a cavern by a spring near the historic city.
Later epos, probably taking the Lemnian point of view, con
nects Aphrodite with Hephaistos as his wife and makes Ares
her paramour. Her place was occupied by the nymph
Aglauros in Athens, where he was worshipped on the Areios
Pagos or Hill of Ares as presiding over manslayers atone
ment and trial for bloodshed.

Art figures Ares as a man of youthful strength, in older
times bearded and fully armed, later beardless and wearing
only a helmet and chlamys. His symbol is the spear, in
ritual the torch, which probably indicates the devastation
wrought by war.

62 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

107. Aphrodite in Greece is especially the goddess of
love and of the beauty that provokes love. When in Homer
she is scorned by her sister Athena for her unwarlike nature,
Zeus himself gently smiling takes her under his protection,
with the words " Not unto thee, my daughter, are given the
works of war ; rather do thou pursue the pleasant works of
wedlock" (//. v. 428 f. ). Hence Eros, the incarnate
yearning of love, is regarded as her constant attendant, and, in
the later conception, as her actual son. In her train are Peitho
or Persuasion and the Charites, to whom she stands very near
in other respects also, for in the Iliad Charis is the wife of
Hephaistos, while in the Odyssey Aphrodite herself holds
this place. Her parents are Zeus and Dione, in the same
way as the embodiment of youthful bloom, Hebe, is daughter
of Zeus and Hera. In Thebes she is associated with Ares
the god of war and death, with whom she is connected in
Homer also. Harmonia ( Union ), who is closely allied to
Aphrodite herself viewed as Pandemos (the love bringing
the people together ), and the war-god s attendants
Deimos or Terror and Phobos or Flight, are accounted her
children.

1 08. These associations, based as they are on speculation,
as well as her substitution for other goddesses, indicate that
Aphrodite s home is not Greece. As already in Homer she
is termed the Cyprian (Kypris], and her apparently oldest
places of worship, Amathus and Idalion, lie in Cyprus, we
should probably look for her true home on this island. From
here her worship may have come to Kythera (Cerigo) and
Sparta, as also to Corinth, Elis, Athens, and on the other
side to Mount Eryx in Sicily. In Cyprus again she is
probably but a local form of the Assyrian-Phoenician goddess
of fruitfulness, Istar or Astarte, to whom she bears a peculiar
likeness in her relations with the Semitic Adonis ( Lord )
worshipped chiefly in the Syrian Byblos and in Cyprus itself.
The latter was conceived as a beautiful youth beloved of
Aphrodite, who in midsummer is wounded during the chase
by a boar (the sun), speedily perishes, and then is doomed to

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 63

abide until the spring in the nether world with Persephone,
who thus appears as his Greek counterpart.

109. To Cyprus also belongs originally the legend of
Aphroditos or Hermaphroditos, a god of double sex akin to
Aphrodite herself, and representing nature s powers of luxuri
ant increase ; properly he seems to have borne the latter name
only because he was represented as a rule in the shape of a
hermes ( 83). Through a mistaken interpretation of this
name he was afterwards made into a son of Hermes and
Aphrodite (compare Priapos, 117). Similarly Aphrodite s
connection with Anchises the king of Dardanos in the
Troad, to whom she comes on Mount Ida and bears Aineias,
is probably of Oriental origin. Anchises again is perhaps
akin to the comely Paris the son of Priamos, who awards to
her the prize of beauty ; in the same way she herself is doubt
less connected with the beautiful Helena, whom she procures
for Paris as reward. From Astarte she seems to have bor
rowed even her common by-name of worship, Urania
( heavenly one ) ; the story of her relation to Uranos is
plainly a mere fiction to explain this title, made up after her
name Aphrodite had been wrongly interpreted as foam-born.
It is the same with her connection with the sea, on which the
part played by her in Greece throws no light, and with her
worship as Euploia ( giver of fair passage ), Pontta ( ocean-
goddess ), and the like ; in this quality the dolphin and swan
are her appropriate attributes.

no. In Mykenai have been found figures of a naked
goddess attended by doves. Though clearly modelled on the
representations of the Asiatic goddess of fertility, they should
probably be described as early images of Aphrodite. From
the Homeric times she wears, like all other Greek goddesses,
long garments ; she holds fruit in her hands, and doves sit at
her feet. From the fourth century onwards however she
appears again as partly or wholly naked, as she is conceived as
bathing or as Anadyomene (arising from the sea). The finest
example of the half-naked goddess is the Aphrodite of Melos ;
Praxiteles represented her for her sanctuary at Knidos as

64 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

entirely nude. As emblems of fruitfulness the ram or goat as
well as the dove are assigned to her.

in. Eros is on the other hand the male personification
of love. As a god in the true sense of the word he was
worshipped from ancient times, probably even by the pre-
Hellenic population, at Thespiai in Boiotia, at Parion on the
Hellespont, and at Leuktra in Lakonia. His cult at Thespiai
centred round a primitive symbol, an unhewn stone ; he him
self was accounted there the son of Hermes the giver of fruit-
fulness by the infernal mother Artemis. In the Homeric
poems he does not appear as a god, and Hesiod regards him
only as a primal power creating the universe, although he cer
tainly knew of his actual worship.

112. From Eros were later distinguished Himeros or
passionate desire and Pothos or lover s yearning, although
these did not actually come to be regarded as divinities ; and
thus there gradually grew up a number of Erotes no longer
distinguishable from one another. From the commencement
of the fifth century B.C. Eros finds portrayal in art as a winged
boy or a tender youth with a blossom and lyre, a fillet (raivia)
and crown in his hands, and often associated with Aphrodite,
who is now looked upon as his mother. From the fourth
century onwards he receives a bow and arrows or a torch as
his attribute, the pain of love excited by him being regarded
as a wound. Later the torch was viewed as a symbol of the
light of life, and Eros like Aphrodite was brought into
connection with death and the infernal world. An inverted
and expiring torch was put into his hand, or he himself was
figured as wearily sinking to sleep, and thus he was turned into
the death-god Thanatos.

Finally, following Platonic conceptions, men expressed the
love that at once blesses and racks the human soul by depict
ing Eros as either winningly embracing or cruelly torturing
Psyche, the soul portrayed as a butterfly (3) or a maiden
with butterfly s wings.

IX. The Religion of Dionysos. 113. An entirely
new kind of worship spread through Greece when the fanatical

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 65

service of Dionysos was introduced. This was to some extent
known already to Homer, but it finds in him only a passing
mention. The cult of Dionysos had its origin in Thrace ;
thence, like the service of Ares, it was carried by emigrants
moving south-westwards to Phokis and Boiotia, and later also
to Attica. The Thracians were closely akin to the Phrygians
of Asia Minor, among whom he was adored under the name
of Sabazios, as the son of the divine mother Ma. In his own
home, as later in Greece, the god was worshipped at night
time by women, who wandered about the mountain woodlands
in passionate excitement with torches in their hands ; these
are the orgies, opyta, a word connected with opyaw
( swell, be excited ) and 0/3777 ( impulse ). These
worshippers became in myth his nurses the Nymphs or his
attendants the Bacchai ( shouters ) , Mainades ( mad
women ), and Thyiades ( raging ones ).

114. The wild round-dance, the shaking of the head, the
shouting, and the distracting music of the flute, together with
the use of intoxicating drinks, especially of wine, which was
grown in Thrace from early times, roused them to an ecstasy
in which they imagined themselves united with the god.
Their souls seemed to leave their bodies and join the troop of
spirits attending on him ; or they fancied the god himself
entered into their bodies and inspired them. The feeling of the
opposition between soul and body which displays itself in this
rapture (l/corao-is) leads to a belief in the divine nature of the
spirit, and hence at the same time to a conviction of its im
perishability ; for if the soul can part from the mortal body
and live on by itself in ecstasy, it can do so equally well in
death. To Dionysos the god of souls, as to the souls them
selves, was now attributed the form of a snake ; in order to
take him up into themselves, his worshippers tore to pieces
and swallowed snakes or other young animals which were
consecrated to him and in earlier times were imagined to
represent him, such as calves and goats, probably too in the
oldest times even children, drank the blood, which was
looked upon as the seat of vital power, and enwrapped them-

F

66 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

selves in the raw skins. Meanwhile they called in a loud
voice upon the god, conceived at the time of the winter
solstice as a child slumbering in a winnowing-fan, to vouch
safe fruitfulness in the commencing year. From the cry of
rejoicing uttered by them the god himself was called Bacchos
or lacchos.

115. The same meaning is betrayed by the festal rites of
the Little Dionysia, celebrated at the Anthesteria ( flower-
feast ) in the country and in Athens by a symbolic wedding
of the god with the queen, representing the land ; her place
was taken in the time of the republic by the wife of the Archon
Basileus.

An intoxicating drink was prepared also from the fruit of
the ivy ; hence this likewise was sacred to Dionysos. As
Lyaios ( setting free from care ) he carries as his symbol
the vine-branch or the* thyrsos (a staff capped with a pine-
cone) wreathed with ivy. In his honour was held at Athens
the vintage-festival of the Oschophoria ( carrying of grape-
clusters ) , as well as the feast of the wine-press, the Lenma.
In vine-growing Naxos, which was the centre of the worship
of Dionysos on the islands populated by lonians, the dithyram-
los was probably sung to him at first as a simple drinking
ditty. In Corinth this was remodelled into a choral song
performed by singers attired as satyrs ; from this grew up at
the Dionysiac festivities of Thebes the dithyramb of Pindar,
and in Athens the Drama in its earliest form as rpaywSia
( goat-song ) or Satyr-play (o-o/ruptKov, crarupot). Hence
in Athens at the spring games of the Great Dionysia the most
important part of the feast was the production of the dramas
that had grown out of this song.

1 1 6. When the true meaning of the above mentioned
sacrifice of children was no longer understood, the Orphics,
or expounders of the religious poetry founded on the worship
of Dionysos, created about the time of Peisistratos a fiction
to explain that rite. Dionysos himself, they said, had as
a child or in the shape of a beast been torn to pieces by
the Titans, the foes of the gods, and thence had received the

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 67

name Zagreus. The word seems to be properly a by-name
of the death-god who ravishes all away (Za-aypeus, the
Wild Hunter ?).

Once introduced into the Hellenic system of deities, the
Thracian stranger becomes the son of Zeus, his mother Semele
the daughter of Kadmos of Thebes, as he was there chiefly
worshipped. On her premature death Zeus conceals the still
undeveloped embryo in his own thigh until the time of birth.
Then Hermes conveys it for further care to the nymphs of
Nysa or to their equivalents the Hyades ( maidens of the
rain-cloud ).

117. Other myths refer to the opposition with which the
introduction of this foreign cult was met. Even in Thrace,
the god s home, barbarian foes of his worship seem to be
typified in Lykurgos, who pursued him and his nurses with a
double-axe. In the Minyeian Orchomenos he is opposed by
the sober industrious daughters of Minyas, and similarly in
Argos by those of Proitos, in Thebes again by King Pcn-
theus himself. They however all perish through the madness
sent upon them by the god, which is the final stage of
drunken excitement.

The marriage of Dionysos with Ariadne, a Cretan goddess
of near kindred to Aphrodite, which is localised in Naxos or
Dia, is in complete agreement with the character he bears
elsewhere ; its meaning is clearly marked by the names of the
sons sprung from it, Oinopion ( wine-drinker ) , StapLylos
( grape ), and Euantles ( blooming one ). By Aphro
dite again he is the father of Priapos the god of gardens
and herds worshipped at Lampsakos on the Hellespont, who
seems to be of kindred nature to himself.

1 1 8. The oldest symbol of his worship was a consecrated
post or pillar formed probably from a holy tree, from which
again the earliest true cult-statues developed on the addition
of a mask and clothing. The representation of him as a
bearded, fully-clad man remains the standard one until the
fourth century B.C. ; later he appears as a child on the arm of
Hermes or of a bearded satyr. After Praxiteles had figured

68 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

him as a naked youth clad only in the skin of a fawn
(ve/?pis), this nude boyish type came to be universally
accepted.

X. The Goddesses of Fate. 119- As order and
law in the states of men came gradually to prevail over the arbi
trary will of the strong man, these ideas were independently
personified in the Goddesses of Fate standing by the side of the
gods of the older time, gods conceived, entirely on the model
of human rulers, as swayed by passions. In Homer, as in
the States of his age, the position of these goddesses is still
uncertain. The apportioned lot, Moira who appears
also, though not so often, in the plural number as well,
or Aisciy is regarded sometimes as an expression of the will
of Zeus, while in other parts of the poems she already
stands independently by his side or even above him, and
in this case he, like the other gods, does but execute her
decisions. Hence the Moirai in Hesiod are in one place
styled daughters of Night, and in another children of Zeus and
Themis. They decide the destiny of man at once on his
birth, and all the important events of life, especially marriage
and death, take place under their direction. After Hesiod
three Moirai are distinguished Klotho, * spinner of the life s
thread, Lachesis, the * giver of life s portion, and Atropos,
the unswerving, inexorable one, who sends death. In
accordance with this they carry as emblems in art spindles
and lots, sometimes also a roll and the balance, like their
mother Themis. The Romans identified them with their own
Parcae and Fata.

1 20. Nemesis, the apportioner, who first appears in
personal form in Hesiod, originally embodies, like them, the
idea of the * allotted portion. She watches over the main
tenance of due measure, and hence the ell-rule and balance
pertain to her as emblems. As moreover she reprobates and
punishes (ve/Aeo-cio), ve/A(rio/x.ai) all offences against the law
of measure, especially those caused by immoderate self-con
fidence (hybns^ she becomes also the wrathful requiter ; and
now as a tamer of arrogance she holds a bridle, yoke and

Tyche of AnUuch. Vatican.

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 7*

scourge. Usually however she is characterised as the god
dess warning men against pride by the gesture of spitting into
her bosom, while at the same time lifting her robe ; for by
this token of humiliation men sought to ward off the baneful
results of pride. As recruiter in the next world she was
honoured in Athens at the festival of the Nemesia ; proper
worship however was accorded to her only at Rhamnus in
Attica. On her identification with Leda see 135.

121. Of these personifications, which gradually dissolved
the old belief in the gods, the latest is Tyche, Good Luck,
the Latin Fortuna. She appears indeed as a person already
in the older lyric poets ; but she does not gain any general
worship as a god until faith in the power of the old deities
begins to wane. Now in the age of unbelief she was reputed
the giver of fruitfulness and wealth, as well as the director of
human destiny and the saviour from perils at sea and in war ;
hence also she was often regarded as the guardian goddess of
cities. The horn of plenty and rudder were her attributes ;
and besides these a rolling wheel or a ball was assigned to
her, in order to indicate Fortune s fickleness.

122. The worship of this goddess of Chance however
properly amounts to a denial of all real divine power.
Thus after the destruction of the old positive faith in gods
who guided in consciousness and grace men s destinies, the
Greek world made itself ready to receive the new doctrine
of salvation going forth from Palestine. For although for
a time philosophy strove to inspire anew the old outworn
forms with a content of ethical thought, it was never able to
furnish a truly comforting conviction of a life after death and
of a justice that shall make amends for the imperfections of
this world.

HEROIC POETRY

Heroic Poetry.

I. Theban Legends. 123. Kadmos, the builder of
the Kadmeia, from which he himself as eponymous hero
derives his name, is the mythical ancestor of the princely race
of Kadmeiones dwelling on the citadel of Thebes. He de
stroyed a dragon born of Ares that lurked by a spring. From
its teeth when sown in the earth grew the brazen Spartoi or
* sown men, /. e. the earliest inhabitants of Thebes. When
they had for the most part slain one another in a fratricidal
strife aroused by Kadmos devices, he founded the Kadmeia
with the aid of the five survivors, /. e. the ancestors of the
noble families of Thebes. He then wedded Harmonia
( Union ), the daughter of the national Boiotian deities Ares
and Aphrodite; this points to the creation of an ordered
civic life. Of their children, Ino and Semele should be
mentioned. Finally Kadmos with his wife, like other
heroes, took the form of a snake; both however were re
moved by Zeus into Elysion. In Sparta Kadmos had a
heroon, or place of worship as a hero.

Later legend, which was especially propagated from
Delphoi, placed the home of Kadmos in Phoenicia, and made
him a son of King Agenor of Tyre. By the latter, it is
said, he was despatched with his brothers, the tribal heroes
Phoinix, Kilix, and Thasos, to seek for his sister Europe
when she had been carried away by Zeus ; but on arriving
at Boiotia he founded Thebes. While playing with her
comrades on the shore of Sidon or Tyre, Europe had been
led by Zeus, appearing in the form of a bull, to mount upon
his back, and was then suddenly borne away by him over the
sea to Crete, where Zeus Laterios may have been once wor
shipped in bull s form. Minos and Rhadamanthys were re
puted her sons ; the feast of the Hellotia was celebrated in honour
of Europe Hellotia or Hellotis in Crete, and in it an enormous
crown of myrtle was carried about.

HEROIC POETRY 73

124. Antiope is a heroine of Boiotia and Sekyon. In
the hills of Kithairon she bears to Zeus the twins Amphion
and Zethos, who probably are in origin akin to the Lakonian
Dioskoroi. Being later cruelly tortured by Dirke, the jealous
wife of her uncle Lykos, she flees to Kithairon, and there un
recognised she meets her sons, whom a herdsman had brought
up. On a festival of Dionysos however she is captured
again by Dirke, and in punishment of her flight she is bound
to the horns of a bull to be crushed to death. Then her sons
learn from their fosterfather the secret of their birth, free their
mother, and execute the punishment to which she has been
doomed on Dirke herself, who ac she dies is transformed into
the spring of that name near Thebes. The binding of Dirke
to the bull was represented at the beginning of the second
century by Apollonios and Tauriskos of Tralles in the marble
group well known under the name of the Farnese Bull,
which is now in Naples.

The twins now make themselves masters of Thebes and
surround the lower town with the seven-gated wall, the stones
dragged thither by the powerful Zethos setting themselves in
ordered rows by the magic of Amphion s harping. It is a
story probably meant to extol the regulative influence of music,
in which the same law of proportion rules as in the art of
building.

125. Amphion wedded Niobe, the daughter of Tantalos,
who had inherited the pride of her father. As she had borne
six sons and six daughters, she boasted that she was richer
than Leto, who had but two children. Apollon and Artemis
avenged the insult offered to their mother by slaying all the
children of Niobe, who in grief for her bereavement turned
into a stone and was removed to Mount Sipylos in Lydia ;
but she was invoked in Greece too as a goddess, and a
spring of Argos bore her name. Amphion slew himself; his
grave was shown near Thebes.

The slaughter of the Niobids was represented in a group
by Skopas or Praxiteles, probably for the city of Seleucia in
Cilicia, and this was later brought to Rome. Most of the

74 HEROIC POETRY

figures in it have come down to us in Roman imitations, now
in Florence.

II. The Legends of Argos, Mykenal, and
Tiryns. 126. Excavations have shown that in the palmy
days of the city of Mykenai, a period which must have extended
approximately from 1400 to 2000 B.C., the district of Argolis
entered into close relations with Egypt and Asia. The myths
of this land tell the same story ; lo and Danaos point to a
connection with Egypt, Perseus and the Pelopids to one
with Asia.

lo, the daughter of the river-god Inachos, is loved by Zeus ;
the jealous Hera therefore transforms her into a heifer, the
animal sacred to her, and sets the many-eyed, all-seeing
(7ravo7rr7s) Argos to keep watch on her near Mykenai, until
at the command of Zeus he is cast into slumber and slain by
Hermes, who on this account bears the by-name of Argos-
slayer ( Apyet^ovr^s). Hereupon lo is hunted over land
and sea by a gadfly sent by Hera ; in Euboia or Egypt how
ever she at last recovers from Zeus her human form, and
now gives birth to Epaphos, the father of Danaos and
Aigyptos.

127. Danaos the representative of the Danaoi, who
in Homer s time dwelt in Argolis emigrated, according to
the story, with his fifty daughters, the Danaides, to Greece,
and became King of Argos, where later his gravestone was
shown in the market-place of the city. The fifty sons of
Aigyptos pursued them and sued for the maidens ; but at the
command of Danaos all were slaughtered on their wedding
night by their wives excepting Lynkeus, whom his bride
Hypermestra spared. In punishment of this misdeed the
Danaides were doomed in the nether world to fill with water
a leaking jar.

128. Akrisios, King of Argos, was a descendant of
Lynkeus. From an oracle he learned that he was to be slain
by a grandson ; he therefore hid his daughter Danae in a
brazen chamber and set a close watch over her. But Zeus
nevertheless made his way to her as a golden rain, and she

HEROIC POETRY 75

became mother of Perseus. Akrisios now confined both in a
chest, and cast them into the sea. Simonides of Keos depicts
their sore distress with deep pathos. " When in the cunningly-
wrought chest the raging blast and the stirred billow and
terror fell upon her, with tearful cheeks she cast her arm
around Perseus and spake Alas, my child, what sorrow is
mine ! But thou slumberest, in baby wise sleeping in this
woeful ark ; midst the darkness of brazen rivet thou shinest
and in swart gloom sent forth ; thou heedest not the deep
foam of the passing wave above thy locks nor the voice of
the blast as thou liest in thy purple covering, a sweet face.
If terror had terrors for thee, and thou wert giving ear to
my gentle words I bid thee sleep, my babe, and may the
sea sleep and our measureless woe ; and may change of
fortune come forth, Father Zeus, from thee. For that I
make my prayer in boldness and beyond right, forgive me. "

At length they reached the island of Seriphos, in which
Perseus grew up. The king of it later despatched him
to fetch the head of the Gorgon Medusa. Having the
support of Hermes and Athena, he succeeded in cutting off
the head of the sleeping monster, the sight of which turned
to stone all who beheld it ; he escaped the pursuit of Medusa s
sisters only by the help of a helmet lent to him by Hades,
which made him invisible. In Aithiopia (perhaps Rhodes)
he liberated Andromeda, the daughter of Kepheus, who had
been bound to a rock on the shore as a sacrifice to a sea-
monster sent by Poseidon. After having then turned into
stone all his enemies by the sight of the Gorgon s head and
slain his grandfather, as the oracle foretold, by an oversight in
throwing the quoit, he ruled with his wife Andromeda in
Tiryns, and thence built Mykenai. In Argos he had a
heroon, and he was worshipped also in Athens and Seriphos.

129. The race of Tantalos is later, though even before
the Dorian migration it was powerful in Argos and a great
part of the remaining Peloponnesos. Tantalos at the same
time has his seat on Mount Sipylos in Asia Minor. He is
a figure like Atlas, the supporter of heaven and mountain-

76 HEROIC POETRY

god. As the son of Zeus, the gods honoured him with their
intimate society, but by his sensual lusts and his audacity
(hybris} he forfeited their favour. He was therefore hurled
down into the nether world and there stood, in an eternal
agony of hunger and thirst, in the midst of water under a tree
with abundant fruit ; for water and tree retreated whenever
he stretched forth his hand towards them. According to
another story, a rock ever threatening to fall swung over his
head. This appears to be the older conception, for the name
Tantalos is certainly to be derived from TavToAov/mi, ravra-
Ae ww, to rock, and to be translated by something like
Rocking-Stone ; perhaps rocking-stones, as in Germany,
were looked upon as the seat of the deity on mountain-tops.
There was a mountain of the same name in Lesbos, where
Tantalos also received worship as a hero.

130. His children are Niobe and Pelops, from whom
the Peloponnesos ( island of Pelops ) is said to have got
its name. The latter wooed Hippodameia ( horse-tamer ),
the daughter of King Oinomaos of Elis, and won her by a
race with her father, who perished in it by the treachery of
his charioteer. The preparations for this race are repre
sented on the eastern pediment of the temple of Zeus at
Olympia. Pelops was devoutly worshipped as a hero with
sacrifices and games in Elis and other parts of the Pelopon
nesos.

His son Atreus on the death of Eurystheus became ruler
of Mykenai ; and, according to the older legend furnished
by the 7//W, his brother Thyestes legally inherited the king
dom from him. But later epos, and above all the tragedians,
represent the descendants of Tantalos as involved in a series
of most awful crimes. According to them, Thyestes robbed
his brother of empire, wife, and son. Atreus again, after re
covering the royal power, avenged himself by slaughtering the
sons of Thyestes and setting their flesh as food before their
unwitting father. For this Atreus was in his turn murdered
afterwards by Aigisthos, a son of Thyestes, whom he had
however regarded as his own son and brought up as such.

HEROIC POETRY 77

131. Aigisthos was ousted from the kingship by Aga
memnon and Menelaos, the true sons of Atreus ; the former
became king of Mykenai, the latter of Lakedaimon, where in
later times he and his wife Helena were worshipped as local
gods, especially in Therapne. Paris, the comely son of
Priamos of Troy, abducted Helena with the aid of Aphrodite.
To avenge their shame the two Atreidai mustered a mighty
host of Greeks, over which Agamemnon assumed chief com
mand. When this had gathered at Aulis, contrary winds
delayed their sailing, because Agamemnon had offended the
goddess Artemis. A seer announced that the goddess could
be appeased only by the sacrifice of Agamemnon s daughter
Iphigeneia. Upon this the king sent a messenger to his wife
Klytaimestra 1 at Mykenai to tell her that she should send
her daughter to the camp to be wedded to Achilleus. But
when Iphigeneia was dragged to the sacrifice Artemis carried
her away to Tauris (the Crimean peninsula), and in stead of
the maid a doe stood by the altar. Agamemnon now set
forth with Menelaos and many other heroes against Tix>y.
In the meantime Aigisthos seduced Klytaimestra, who was
wroth with her husband for the immolation of her daughter ;
and the pair then murdered the king when ten years later he
returned home after capturing Troy. In Lakonia, Chaironeia,
and Klazomenai however Agamemnon was worshipped in
after times as Zeus Agamemnon (compare Zeus /3ao-(,A.evs)> a
sort of infernal Zeus ( 24), under the form of a sceptre, the
symbol of kingship ; his grave was shown in Amyklai and
Mykenai. On the murder of her father Elektra, his elder
daughter, saved her young brother Orestes and conveyed him
to King Strophios of Phokis, with whose son Pylades he
formed a friendship. When grown into a youth he hastened
back to Mykenai in order to take vengeance for his father
on the two slayers. In the Elektra of Sophokles, and still
more in that of Euripides, Elektra, herself ill-treated by Kly-

1 The spelling Kiytaimncstra, or Clytaemncstra, is wholly without
authority ; the name usually spelt Hypermnettra seems to be in need
of a like correction to Hypermestra.

78 HEROIC POETRY

taimestra, spurs on her brother by words breathing deep hatred
to execute the hideous deed of blood, when the sight of his
mother makes him hesitate. First Klytaimestra fell transfixed
by his son s sword, then Aigisthos also. But scarcely had
Orestes shed the blood of his mother when the Erinyes arose
to pursue him. He wandered about in restless misery, until
at the bidding of the Delphic oracle he went to Tauris in
order to bring to Greece the statue of Artemis to be found
there. Captured in the attempt to steal it away, he was
doomed to be slain as a sacrifice to the goddess. In her
temple he found his sister Iphigeneia serving as priestess.
With her aid he escaped, carrying her and the statue with
him. Pylades, who had accompanied him everywhere, now
wedded Elektra, Orestes the lovely Hermione, the daughter
of Menelaos and Helena.

Iphigeneia is originally a by-name of Artemis, hence the
priestess may have been akin in character to her goddess.
Orestes, on the other hand, received honour as a hero in
Sparta, Tegea, Trozen, and elsewhere.

III. Corinthian Legends. 132 Closely con
nected with Argos was Corinth, which owing to its position
developed early into an important trading city, and was espe
cially influenced by Phoenicia.

The Iliad already knows of the wily gain-loving Sisyphos,
the ruler of Ephyre, / . e. of Akrokorinthos, the citadel of
the town, where he had a temple. Later he degenerated into
a mere calculator and intriguer, the prototype and image of the
Corinthian trader. For having offended Zeus he was doomed
in the lower world to eternally push up a hill a rock which
ever rolled back from its summit. As his grave on the Isthmos
and his relations with Poseidon mark Sisyphos out as an
ancient sea-god, this punishment is perhaps to be regarded as
a picture of the billow ceaselessly rolling hither and thither
the stones of the beach.

133. His grandson Bellerophontes, or, with a shortened
name, Bellerophon, possesses the winged horse Pegasos ( 59).
Being sent to Lycia, he slew with its aid the terrible Chimaira

HEROIC POETRY 79

(literally she-goat ), a monster compounded of a goat
vomiting fire, a lion, and a snake, which probably personifies
volcanic phenomena. Then he fought against the mountain-
folk of the Solymoi and the man-like Amazons. At length
he sought to force his way upon his steed into heaven itself,
but was hurled down to perish miserably. He enjoyed divine
honours both in Corinth and in Lycia.

IV. Lakonian Legends. 134. The most important
place in Lakonia before the Dorian migration was Amyklai,
a chief seat of the worship of Apollon, south of Sparta.
Here or in Sparta Tyndareos and his wife Leda ruled.
After Zeus, who had a seat upon the neighbouring mountain-
range of Taygetos, had come into her arms in the form of a
swan, Leda became mother of the Dioskoroi, or < sons of
Zeus, Polydeukes (the Latin Pollux] and Kastor, as well
as of Helena. To Tyndareos she bore Klytaimestra ; the
mortal Kastor also was regarded later as his son.

135. The Dioskoroi have their chief seat in Lakonia,
Messenia, and Argos ; later however their worship spread
over the whole Greek world, so that they were invoked every
where as saviours in peril (2um?pes) or as rulers ("AvaKes),
especially in battle and storm by sea. Sometimes too their
sister Helena, who in consequence perhaps of her disastrous
influence on Troy and the Greek nation was at last made
the daughter of avenging Nemesis, was worshipped by their
side as a guardian goddess. Both Dioskoroi ride upon white
horses, but Polydeukes is also accounted a mighty boxer.
After the death of Kastor, who was slain by the Messenian
hero Idas, Polydeukes to avoid separation from his brother
prayed Zeus that they might together spend for ever alternate
days in the lower world and in Olympos.

In art the Dioskoroi appear as youthful horsemen, clad only
in the chlamys and armed with the lance. In view of their
heroic nature, the snake belongs to them as an attribute ;
later however they are characterised by the pointed egg-
shaped cap (71-1X05), or by the addition of two stars.

V. Herakles. 1 36. Herakles is the son of Zeus and

8o HEROIC POETRY

Alkmene ( strong one ), who was the wife of King
Amphitryon of Thebes, a descendant of Perseus. In his youth
he was known also, like his grandfather the ruler of Tiryns,
by the name Alkaios ( man of might ), whence is derived
his by-name AX/cei S^s, in Latin Alcides. No certain explana
tion has been found for his usual name, which is probably
Argive. The second part -/cXerjs -K\f)<;, like the fuller form
-xXeiros, is connected with /c/Ve os * glory ; but it is not certain
that the first part is derived from "Hpa, the tutelary goddess
of Argos, who imposed on him his toils. As a hero he was
especially honoured among the Boiotians, Dorians, and Thessa-
lians ; among the first indeed we find hero-worship in
general quite fully developed at an earlier time than else
where. In Athens, Marathon, and Leontinoi again he
received from ancient times divine honours as dXe^i/caKos
( averter of evil ) and xaAA/viKOs ( conqueror ). Later,
when he was looked upon as chief representative of wrestling,
and hence also as founder of the Olympian Games, his statues
were to be found everywhere in the gymnasia and in the baths
regularly joined to the latter, so that he actually became the
god of all hot baths and healing springs. As again he cleared
the roads from hostile powers, he figures also as guiding god of
travellers (^ye/Aovtos). Often he is accompanied by his
protectress Athena, more rarely by Hermes and Apollon.

137. Like all the sons born to Zeus by other wives, he
is hated by Hera. When Zeus had destined the empire of
Argos to the first descendant of Perseus who should next be
born, she delayed his birth until his cousin Eurystheus came
into the world at Mykenai ; and so Eurystheus became lord
of Argos and therewith liege lord of Herakles. This story
makes it clear that Tiryns was originally looked upon as the
birthplace of Herakles ; for the distant Thebes, though it is
already spoken of in the Iliad as his home, can never have
stood in such a relation of dependence to Mykenai.

While still in the cradle Herakles strangled two serpents
which Hera sent against him. After he had struck dead
with his lyre his teacher Linos for chastising him, Amphitryon

HEROIC POETRY 81

sent him as herdsman to Kithairon, where he destroyed
a monstrous lion. When his father fell in battle against the
inhabitants of Orchomenos, Kreon the last Spartos ( 123)
became king of Thebes, and Herakles received his
daughter Megara as his wife. In a frenzy inspired in him
by Hera he shot down his three children ; on his recovery
he was compelled as atonement to enter the service of
Eurystheus, who now imposed on him a series of grievous
toils. This legend forms the link between the Theban
(Boiotian) and the Argive (Dorian) Herakles-saga ; the
latter seems to contain the oldest elements in it.

138. According to this Argive saga, Herakles had his
dwelling-place in Tiryns, south of Mykenai, as indeed the
legend of his birth suggests. First he struggled here, as at
Kithairon, with a mighty lion haunting Mount Apesas between
Nemea and Mykenai, whose hide he afterwards wore, slung
round his upper body, as his characteristic dress. Then he
proceeded, accompanied by his half-brother and charioteer
lolaos, against the Hydra, the water-snake of the swampy
springs of Lerna in the south of Argos, which legend magni
fied into a creature like the devil-fish. For every head cut
off from the monster two new ones grew again, until lolaos
set the neighbouring wood on fire and scorched the wounds ;
the last deathless head Herakles covered with a rock. He
then soaked his arrows in the poison of the monster.

139. From Mount Erymanthos in Arkadia, down from
whose &now- covered summit plunges a raging mountain-stream
of the same name, comes a boar representing the stream
itself that desolates the meadows of Psophis. Herakles
pursues it into the icy uplands and then brings it in bonds
to Eurystheus, who in abject terror takes refuge in a barrel.
This is followed by the conquest of the Centaurs ( Kentaurol] .
These are sons of Ixion and Nephele ( Cloud ), wild half-
bestial hunters who dwell on Ossa and Pelion in Thessaly,
as well as upon Mount Pholoe on the western border of
Arkadia. Like the Silenoi, they are a compound of the
bodies of man and horse. The oldest works of art give them

8z HEROIC POETRY

the rear-parts of a horse simply joined at the back to a complete
human body, but afterwards the latter passes over in the region
of the hips into a horse s fore-parts. Unlike the other Centaurs,
Cheiron ( the handy one ), who dwells in a cavern of
Pelion, is gentle, upright, and famous as leech, soothsayer, and
trainer of the heroes Achilleus, lason, and Asklepios. Pholos,
who gives his name to Mount Pholoe, resembles him. With
the latter Herakles lodges ; on being entertained with the
wine that is the common property of all the Centaurs, he falls
to quarrelling with them and at length slays most of them
with his arrows. Pholos also (and Cheiron too in later story)
perishes on injuring himself through carelessness with an arrow.
Herakles then captured the hind of Keryneia in Arkadia and
chased away birds resembling the Harpies and Keres, which
haunted the lake of Stymphalos and shot out their feathers
like arrows (a type of the hail-storm). His native Argolis
was now secure from all dangers.

140. His later journeys were to distant lands. Elean local
legend is the basis of the tale of how he cleansed the filthy
stables of the Elean King Augeias ( shining one ) ; accord
ing to tradition, he fulfilled the task by leading through them
the river Menios ( moon-stream ), while on the metope of
the Olympian temple, the only surviving picture of this adven
ture, he uses a long broom. For this work Augeias promised
Herakles the tithe of his herds, but did not keep his word,
for which he was afterwards slain by him, together with his
warriors, after a fierce resistance.

141. With this is probably connected an adventure usually
enumerated tenth in the list, the capture of the kine belonging
to the giant Geryoneus ( Roarer ), who likewise rules in
the far West on the island of Erytheia ( Red-land ). In
order to sail over the ocean Herakles forces Helios to lend
him his sun-boat ; then with his arrows he slays the triple-
bodied giant. On his return he overcomes on the site of
the later Rome the fire-breathing giant Cacus, who has
stolen some of the cows captured by him and hidden them
in a cave, and in Sicily he conquers the mighty boxer

HEROIC POETRY 83

and wrestler Eryx, the representative of the hill of that
name.

The seventh adventure, the taming of the Cretan bull, and
the ninth, the fight with the Amazons, from whose queen
Hippolyte he was commissioned by Eurystheus to demand her
girdle, are perhaps only borrowings from the legend of
Theseus, who accomplishes deeds of this sort ; Herakles
conflict with the Amazons however appears in art somewhat
earlier than that of Theseus, hence a derivation of the latter
from the former is also not impossible.

As eighth labour Herakles receives the order to fetch from
the far North the horses of the Thracian King Diomedes,
which were fed on human flesh. He fulfils the task after
casting the cruel king to his own steeds.

142. The last adventures are closely related to one
another, for both show how at the end of his career Herakles
won immortality by his journey into the nether world and
into the garden of the gods a conception however which later,
when the Argive legend was combined with that of Oita and
Thessaly, was ousted by that of the hero burning himself.
On the way to the garden of the Hesperides ( maidens of
the West ), who guard the golden apples of youth and dwell on
the margin of the western heaven gilded by the sinking sun,
he strangles in the desert of Northern Africa the giant
Antaios, raising him up from the earth, his mother, whose
touch lends her son ever fresh strength. Then he destroys
in Egypt the King Busiris, who cruelly sacrifices all strangers
cast upon the shores of his land, and in whose name that of
the Egyptian god Osiris is certainly contained. After at
length freeing Prometheus, whom Zeus had chained to the
Caucasus, he conies to Atlas, who bears the heavens on his
shoulders, as every mountain appears to do. He begs him
to pluck for him three apples from the tree of the Hesperides
and in the meantime takes his place ; or he enters himself into
the garden of the gods and destroys the dragon Ladon which
guards the tree.

143. The bringing up of the hound of hell, Kerberos, was

84 HEROIC POETRY

put as the hardest toil at the end, plainly because it had been
forgotten that the fetching of the apples which bestowed
eternal youth from the Land of the Blessed, conceived as in
the furthest West, properly signified the reception of Herakles
among the gods. The same thought later found expression
in a trait which may also belong to the Argive legend, the
marriage of Herakles to Hebe, the daughter and virgin counter
part of the now appeased Hera, whilst Italian story unites its
Hercules with luno herself. Herakles descends at the pro
montory of Tainaron into the lower world, frees Theseus
from bondage, fetters Kerberos, and rises again with him near
Trozen or Hermione. Another and perhaps older form of
the same legend seems to be present in the campaign of
Herakles against Pylos ( gate of the nether world), which
is already mentioned in the Iliad ; in it he wounds with a
three-barbed arrow Hades, the ruler of the lower world, and
his enemy Hera.

On the fulfilment of the tasks imposed upon him by
Eurystheus, Herakles servitude came to an end. But
seemingly it was not till after c. 480 B.C. that the number
of his labours was fixed at twelve.

144. The third main group of the Herakles-myths
consists of the traits native to Thessaly and Oita, to which
originally belong his conquest of Oichalia and his slavery
under Omphale.

Herakles sues for lole, daughter of the mighty archer
Eurytos, who rules in the Thessalian Oichalia. But although
he defeats her father in a competition of archery she is denied
him. In revenge he shortly afterwards hurls her brother
Iphitos down from a rock, although the latter is lodging with
him as a guest-friend ; later he also captures the city and
carries off lole as captive. To free himself from blood-guilt
he goes to Delphoi ; but Apollon refuses him an answer.
He then seizes on the sacred tripod in order to carry it off ;
Apollon seeks to prevent this ; the thunderbolt of Zeus stops a
conflict as it is breaking out. Herakles is now told by the oracle
that he can be freed from guilt only by three years of slavery.

HEROIC POETRY 85

145. Hermes therefore sells him to Omphale, who was
later regarded generally as queen of Lydia and ancestress of
the Lydian kings, but originally seems to be the heroine from
whom was derived the name of Oniphalion, a city which
probably lay at one time on the borders of Thessaly and
Epeiros ; l for while in her service he subdues the Itonoi, who
are certainly the inhabitants of the Thessalian Itonos, where he
also has a struggle with the mighty Kyknos. He likewise
conquers the Kerkopes, cunning thieves whose home is at
Thermopylai, and Syleus ( Robber ) by Pelion. His son
by Omphale, Lamios or Lamos, gives a name to Lamia,
which lies not far north from Trachis. Perhaps it was not
until the legend had been shifted to Lydia that it was
embellished by the further conceit that Herakles in the
disguise of a maid worked with the distaff while Omphale
adorned herself with the lion s skin and club.

146. Herakles wooing of Deianeira ( Slayer of men ),
daughter of King Oineus ( Wine-man ) in the vine-growing
Kalydon, for whose possession he has to fight probably as
a representative of civilisation with the wild river-god
Acheloos ( 97), is directly connected with these legends,
and probably too formed originally a part of them, as its scene
was the neighbouring Aitolia. Acheloos appears sometimes
as a natural river, sometimes as a bull or a man with a bull s
head. It is not until Herakles breaks off one of his horns
that he confesses himself defeated, and in order to get it back
offers in exchange the horn of the goat Amaltheia, /. e. the
horn of plenty from which pour forth nourishment and
blessing. This horn however is strictly the property of
Herakles as the giver of fertility, in which quality he was
much worshipped, especially in the country. A counterpart
to the contest with the river-god is an adventure usually
brought into connection with that of the Hesperides the

1 It is described as a city of Chaonia, Ptolem. iii. 14, 17. The
ethnic adjective occurs as O^aXtTjes and O/x^oAeJ, nom. plur. , and
"Ofj.(pa\os, gen. sing.

86 HEROIC POETRY

wrestle with the Hallos Geron or Old Man of the Sea, who is
later called Nereus or Triton.

147. On his return to Trachis he slays the Centaur
Nessos a counterpart to the fight with the Centaurs on
Pholoe when the latter seeks to do violence to Deianeira as
she passes through the river Euenos on his back. When
dying, the Centaur counsels her to collect as a love-philtre
the blood streaming from his wound and to take it with her.
Afterwards when she hears that Herakles, on capturing
Oichalia, has made the fair lole his captive, she smears it on
a robe and sends it to her returning husband. Scarcely has
Herakles put it on when the poison of Nessos eats into his
body. In anger at the tortures imposed on him he hurls the
bringer Lichas into the sea, but is not able to tear off the
robe clinging to his limbs. Deianeira slays herself in despair ;
Herakles weds lole to his son Hyllos, mounts a funeral pile
erected on the summit of Oita, and hands over his bow
and arrows to Poias the father of Philoktetes or to the latter
himself, appointing him to set fire to the pyre. Amidst
thunders and lightnings he then rises, purified by the flame,
into heaven and becomes the peer of the gods.

148. A passage in the Iliad, and, strictly speaking,
another in the Odyssey where however, in accordance with
the harmonising tendencies of a later reviser, only his wraith
appears shew that the notion was elsewhere held that
Herakles actually died through the decree of fate and Hera s
anger, and that he dwelt in the nether world.

In his whole character Herakles in after times embodies
the ideal of the noble Dorian warrior ; and in many parts of
his legend, in his wanderings and struggles, he may be simply
a type of the Doric race, which paid him especial reverence.

149. The oldest of his cult- statues that is known to us
in any detail is one at Erythrai, where like other heroes he
worked as a god of healing by dream-oracles ( 4).
According to coins on which he is represented, he stood there
without the lion s skin, a club in the uplifted right hand, in

HEROIC POETRY 87

the left a lance or pole, with some unknown object. On the
other oldest monuments he is also figured as naked ; after
wards he also wears full armour and a short jerkin, until about
600 B.C. the type with the lion s skin from Cyprus and
Rhodes became dominant. The latter was probably connected,
through the influence of Phoenician models, with Melqart the
sun-god and king of the city of Tyre, with whom later he was
often identified. His hair and beard are usually cut short ; more
rarely he appears in older times without a beard. After the
beginning of the fourth century he is again regularly figured as
quite naked ; he then carries the lion s skin on his left arm, the
club in his right hand. Praxiteles gives him an expression of
profound sensibility, Lysippos a posture of activity in which
he balances himself on his hips ; the latter is certainly the
originator of the type of the weary resting Herakles, as it
is preserved to us especially in the so-called Farnese
Hercules at Naples. In the pictures of his exploits in
earlier times, as well as in the narrative of the Iliad, he
commonly carries the bow as his weapon, more rarely and
generally in works of Ionic origin the club, and in those from
Peloponnesos the sword, which in the Odyssey he bears as well
as the bow.

VI. Theseus. 1 50. The commercial Ionian race, who
were worshippers of Poseidon, had their chief seats in Euboia,
on the eastern coast of Attica, Argolis, and the islands which
form connecting links with the Ionic colonies on the shore of
Asia Minor. Into Athens it made its way from the east and
south ; hence Ion, the mythical ancestor of the lonians, is
properly a stranger in Athens and related to the native royal
house of Kekrops only through his mother Kreusa the
daughter of Erechtheus. Theseus, also specifically Ionic, is
less of a foreigner than this un worshipped ancestor of the
lonians. Like Herakles among the Dorians, Theseus was
developed as a pure ideal of the Ionic hero. His proper
home is Trozen in Argolis, which is probably to be regarded
as a primitive centre of the united Ionian tribes ; for on the
island of Kalauria fronting it stood the temple of Poseidon,

88 HEROIC POETRY

which was looked on as the federal sanctuary of an old Ionic
amphiktyonia or religious union.

151. The reputed father of Theseus is Poseidon himself,
or else King Aigeus of Athens, who himself is merely
Poseidon in another form, having grown into a separate
personality from one of the god s by-names. His mother is
Aithra, daughter of King Pittheus of Trozen. Before
Aigeus parts from her and returns to Athens he hides his
sword and sandals beneath a heavy rock with the order to
send his son to him as soon as he can raise it. When grown
to youth Theseus travels with these tokens over the Isthmos
to seek his father. On the way he destroys several robbers,
the clubman Periphetes ; the pine-bender (pityokamptes}
Sinis ; Skiron, who dwelt on a steep pass of the Isthmos and
hurled wayfarers down into the sea ; the wrestler Kerkyon ;
and the giant Damastes, who racked strangers upon a bed,
whence he was also styled Polypemon ( sorely harmful ) or
Prokrustes ( racker ). He moreover overcame the wild
sow of Krommyon.

152. Meanwhile Aigeus has wedded the sorceress
Medeia. When Theseus arrives in Athens she seeks to
poison him ; but he is saved, for his father recognises him by
the sword he brings. He now overcomes the gigantic
Pallas and his mighty sons, who rise up against Aigeus ; then
he tames the Cretan bull which Herakles has let loose, and
which has run from Mykenai to Marathon. Properly how
ever this exploit seems to be only a later by-form of his
struggle with the bull-headed Minotauros, which in the usual
narrative follows it.

153. Androgeos, a son of King Minos of Crete, had been
slain by the Athenians. As an atonement for this murder
they were compelled to send every nine years to Knosos
seven boys and seven maidens, who furnished a meal to the
Minotauros confined in the labyrinth. The latter, conceived
as a man with a bull s head, was the offspring of Pasiphae,
a goddess closely akin to Aphrodite and much worshipped in
Crete and Lakonia, whom heroic legend made the wife of

HEROIC POETRY 89

King Minos of Crete, by the so-called Cretan bull, that is, the
bull-shaped sun-god Zeus Asterios of Gortyn, with whom
Minos himself is probably to be identified (compare 123).
Theseus, who voluntarily accompanied the victims, received
on his arrival from Minos daughter Ariadne, who falls in
love with him, a hank of thread and the counsel to fasten one
end of the string to the entrance of the maze in order that he
might find his way out again from its countless intricate
passages. After slaying the Minotauros he secretly con
ducted the rescued victims, and with them Ariadne herself,
away from Knosos and landed with them on the neighbour
ing isle of Dia or Naxos. Here Ariadne stayed behind, and,
according to one form of the legend, which is probably the
older, was slain by Artemis because she had been previously
united to Dionysos and had preferred to him her mortal lover ;
according to the view afterwards current she wedded
Dionysos, who was much worshipped in Naxos, after Theseus
had privily deserted her.

1 54. On sailing away from Athens Theseus had promised
his father to replace the black mourning sail of the ship by a
white one in case his undertaking should have a prosperous
issue. As however he forgot to do so, Aigeus on the
approach of the ship hurled himself down from a rock of the
Akjopolis or into the sea, which obtained from him the name
of the Aegaean, Aigaios. Later he was worshipped in
Athens as a hero. Theseus founded in memory of his
prosperous return the harvest feast of the Pyanopsia, or bean-
festival, and the vintage-feast of the Oschophoria ( 115).
As ruler he now combined twelve separate districts into the
collective State of Athens on the southern foot of the old
Akropolis, an event that lived on in the memory of the people
through the celebration of the ancient Synoikia or * union of
dwellings, and according to some procured for him his name
>7<revsj * the Founder (compare 0r/s and Tiflevcu).

155. Like Bellerophon, Herakles, and Achilleus, Theseus
fights against the Amazons, either as a comrade of Herakles
or on the occasion of an inroad made by them into Attica.

90 HEROIC POETRY

He wins there the love of Antiope or Hippolyte, whom he
has conquered (we may compare Achilleus and Penthesileia),
weds her, and begets by her Hippolytos ( unyoker of
horses ), a hero honoured in Trozen and Sparta. Later his
stepmother Phaidra ( bright one, a goddess akin to
Aphrodite), whom Theseus has wedded after the death of the
Amazon, falls in love with the chaste young Hippolytos, and
on being rejected by him brings about his ruin through a false
accusation.

156. In Marathon, the scene of his struggle with the
bull and one of the old Ionic Four Cities, Theseus meets the
Thessalian Peirithoos ( the round-runner ), the King of
the Lapithai ( stone-folk ), a race akin to the Phlegyai and
Minyai. With him he forms a close friendship and as is
already mentioned in the Iliad, in a passage which however is
much contested fights by his side at his wedding with
Hippodameia or Deidameia against the wild Centaurs of
Mount Pelion, when the latter in their drunkenness lay
violent hands upon the women ; this is a scene often treated
by art in the first half of the fifth century B.C., notably upon
the metopes of the Parthenon and the group on the western
pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, whereas earlier,
as far back as the seventh century, Herakles figures as the
opponent of the Centaurs. In concert with Peirithoos
Theseus then abducts the youthful Helena from Sparta, and
brings her to the hill-fortress of Aphidna (apparently in the
north of Attica), from which she was later set free by her
brothers the Dioskoroi, while Theseus with his friend was going
down into the nether world (probably at Hermione, accord
ing to the older view) in order to carry off Persephone for
the latter. Both the friends however adhere to a rock- seat
at the entrance, and Herakles afterwards is able to tear only
Theseus loose.

157. During his absence Menestheus, who in the Iliad
is the leader of the Athenians, had made himself master of
the kingdom. Theseus was therefore compelled soon after
his return to leave the city ; he went to the island of Skyros,

HEROIC POETRY 91

and was here treacherously thrown down by King Lykomedes
into the sea. Later however his sons by Phaidra, Demophon
and Akamas, became rulers in Athens. The bones of
Theseus, alleged to have been revealed by a miracle, were
brought in the year 468 B.C. by Kimon from Skyros to
Athens, and deposited in a sanctuary newly erected to
him, between the later Gymnasion of Ptolemaios and the
Anakeion. He did not however receive any proper worship
in Athens until the Ionic and democratic element of the
population became supreme, at the beginning of the fifth
century B. c.

158. By art Theseus is represented as fighting the
Minotauros perhaps as early as the ninth century B.C. on gold
plates found in a grave at Corinth, and soon afterwards on the
chest of Kypselos, which likewise is of Corinthian origin, as
standing by Ariadne. In the sixth century the struggle
with the bull and the Amazons also appears, as well as the
rape of Helena ; the rest of his adventures cannot be traced
with certainty in art until the fifth century. His weapon is in
the oldest period the sword, and in dress and bodily frame too
he resembles other heroes. Later, in imitation of the type of
Herakles, he commonly carries the club, and often too the
skin of a wild beast, but is distinguished from Herakles by
youthful beardlessness and more slender proportions. Theseus
is certainly a figure primarily akin to the Dorian Herakles of
Boiotia, Argolis, and Thessaly, but one that has been
developed in harmony with the ideal of the Ionic hero.

VII. Meleagros and the Hunt of Kalydon. 1 59.
Meleagros, a mighty hunter, was son of Oineus of Kalydon
and Althaia. He and many comrades destroyed a terrible
boar sent by Artemis which laid waste the fields. When
however he slew a brother of his mother in a conflict arising
from claims for the prize of victory, Althaia prayed the
infernal gods to avenge the deed of bloodshed on her son, and
soon after he fell in battle. Poetry after Homer, borrowing
an idea from the old custom of extinguishing lights in curs
ing, adds that the Moirai had announced to his mother that he

92 HEROIC POETRY

should live only so long as a brand smouldering on the heard
should be unconsumed by the fire ; thereupon she quickl)
extinguished it and preserved it, but on the slaughter of he
brother burned it, and thus brought about the death of her son

1 60. Atalante, the coy huntress of Arkadia and Boiotia
who is near akin to the huntress-goddess Artemis, was onl
later brought into connection with Meleagros. In his love
he promised her the head of the boar as a trophy because sh
had first wounded the beast ; in consequence he quarrellec
with his uncle and came to his death in the manner abov
described. Atalante again would only have for husband th
man who should conquer her in a race ; the defeated com
petitors were slain. Meilanion (or Hippomenes, according to
another legend) received from Aphrodite three golden apple
which on her advice he threw down while Atalante wai
running. As she picked them up he meanwhile outdistancec
her, and thus she became perforce his bride.

VIII. The Argonauts. 161. The Saga of the
Argonauts, probably under the influence of the Ionian poets,
combines so closely together the legends of the Thessalian
city lolkos, of the Boiotian Orchomenos both of which
were inhabited by the ancient stem of the Minyai and oi
Corinth, which from earliest times had had connections by
sea with the far East, that the proper mythical nucleus in it
can no longer be determined with certainty.

lolkos is the home of lason, the Argonauts captain. He
is son of Aison, but is under the wardship of his uncle Pelias,
and like Achilleus, Asklepios and Herakles is trained by the
Centaur Cheiron on the neighbouring Pelion and instructed in
surgery. During his absence Pelias had received an oracle
which, as given by Pindar (P. v. 75 f. ), bade him "take
exceeding heed of the man with one shoe whenso from the
mountain abode he come to the sunny land of famed lolkos,
whether stranger or native." As lason had lost a shoe in
crossing the river Anauros on his return homewards, Pelias
feared lest he should be ousted by him from his throne, and
therefore despatched him to fetch the golden fleece from

HEROIC POETRY 93

Aia, the land of Aietes, in the hope that the youth might
perish in the attempt. lason mustered a great band of heroes,
built the first large ship, the Argo ( Swift ), surmounted
under Hera s protection all the perils that threatened him, and
after his return ruled in lolkos with Medeia the daughter of
Aietes as his wife.

162. Medeia persuaded the daughters of Pelias to slay
their father, promising to restore him to life and youth, and
then broke her word. According to the later form of the
legend, which combines together diverse traits, she then
fled with lason from Pelias son Akastos to Corinth, while
splendid funeral games were held in honour of the murdered
man.

Only one daughter of Pelias, Alkestis, had not shared in
the killing of her father. She afterwards died a voluntary
death for her husband Admetos the King of Pherai, when the
Moirai had decreed that he might be saved by the self-sacrifice
of another, but she was won back to life by Herakles wrestling
with Death.

163. It was however apparently in Orchomenos that
the myth of the Golden Fleece chiefly developed. King
Athamas who however is closely connected also with the
Athamantian Plain at Halos in the Thessalian Phthiotis had
by Nephele ( Cloud ) two children, Phrixos and Helle.
At the instigation of his second wife Ino he destined
Phrixos to be sacrificed to Zeus Laphystios, to heal the
barrenness of the land ; but Nephele carried off her children
through the air upon a ram given by Hermes, which had a
fleece of gold. In the flight Helle fell into the arm of the
sea named after her Hellespontos, while Phrixos safely reached
Aia, the bright land of the rising and setting sun, which was
located sometimes in the East, sometimes in the West. Here
he sacrificed the ram in his own stead to Zeus Laphystios.
He hung up its golden fleece in the grove of Ares, where it
was guarded by a dragon.

The offering and rescue of Phrixos may have arisen from
human sacrifice practised in the worship of Zeus Laphystios

94 HEROIC POETRY

which was later replaced by that of a ram ; and the sann
circumstance may be the basis of the Iphigeneia legend. Th(
story relating to Helle was perhaps only tacked on t(
explain the name of the Hellespont.

164. To Corinth lastly belongs the legend of Medei;
and the further developments of the voyage of the Argonauts
of which the goal was in Corinth specified as Kolchis, th(
most easterly land known to Corinthian seamen. Aietes, soi
of Helios and Perse, and supposed original of the name o:
Aia, was also accounted a prince of Corinth, where upon the
citadel Ephyre or Akrokorinthos there was a chief seat of the
worship of Helios ; but he was said to have afterward;
emigrated to Kolchis. When lason demanded of him the
return of the Golden Fleece, he declared himself willing i
lason would first bend to the yoke two fire-breathing bull;
with brazen feet and with them plough the field of Ares.
Medeia, who like Ariadne was inspired with love for the
stranger hero, protected him by a magic unguent from the
effects of the fire, and then lent him further aid in overcoming
the dragon that watched the fleece.

165. She now embarked with the Argonauts, but carried
off her young brother Apsyrtos with her ; when she was
followed by her father Aietes she slew the boy and cast his
limbs one by one in the sea, that her father might be delayed
in searching for them. After an adventurous journey, which
later story with increasing geographical knowledge extended
further and further towards the North and West, they reached
Corinth or returned to lolkos, where they became supreme.
But when afterwards lason cast off Medeia in order to wed
the daughter of King Kreon, Medeia slew the latter together
with his daughter by means of a poisonous magic robe, and
after killing her own two children fled upon a dragon-car to
Athens, where she wedded Aigeus. After her unsuccessful
attempt on the life of Theseus she returned to her home in Asia.

Medeia is the mythical prototype of all helpful fairies and
wicked sorceresses; lason ( Healer ) may be a local hero
with healing powers who was native to lolkos.

HEROIC POETRY 95

1 66. To this nucleus of the Argonaut legend was later
joined a whole series of local stories and shipmen s tales, and
more heroes were made sharers in the voyage. At Chalked on
on the Bosporos Polydeukes was said to have overcome in
boxing the giant Amykos ( mangier ), who prevented
seafarers from approaching a certain spring. On the other
side of the Bosporos the Argonauts met the blind king
Phineus, who was tortured by the Harpies, which as soon as
he set himself to eat came upon him and carried off or defiled
his food ; they were now pursued by Zetes and Kalais, the
sons of Boreas, and driven away for ever (compare this with
the birds of Stymphalos, 139). In return Phineus teaches
his saviours how to avoid the further perils of their voyage ;
in particular they pass safely through the Symplegades ( col
liding rocks, a development of the Homeric Planktai], which
hitherto had crushed everything that came between them, but
henceforth stood fixed at the entrance of the Bosporos. In
the adventure at Kolchis the sowing of the dragon s teeth
is a trait transferred to lason from Kadmos ( 123).

IX. The Theban Legend-Cycle. 167. The all-
pervading idea that we find underlying the stories combined
in the Theban series of legends (Kyklos, cycle) is the doctrine
that man is neither by wisdom nor by power and strength
able to fulfil his own designs against the will and determina
tion of the gods. Indeed, the very foresight which seeks to
bring to naught the purpose of the gods as announced by
oracles and other signs must itself subserve the execution of
the divine will. This is shown in the simplest shape in the
march of the Seven against Thebes described in the Thebais,
of which the campaign of the Epigonoi or * Descendants is
a later counterpart ; and it appears in more complicated form
in the Oidipodeia, which had already in early Homeric times
treated what is probably the oldest part of the whole legend,
and led up to the conflict of the Thebais. The concluding
Allmalonis) from the beginning of the sixth century B.C.,
depicts finally the power of the godhead to punish murder of
kindred. In the surviving Thebais of the Roman poet Statius

96 HEROIC POETRY

the leading thoughts of all these lost epics are brought to
gether. This group of legends is still more fully treated
from the purely moral standpoint in Attic tragedy, from
which still survive the Seven against Thebes of Aischylos, the
Oidipus King, Oidipus at Kolonos, and the Antigone of Sophokles,
as well as the Phoenician Women of Euripides.

1 68. Laios the son of Labdakos was by the will of the
gods to have been the last king of Thebes from the race oi
Kadmos. He was therefore told by the oracle at Delphoi
that if he begot a son this son would slay him and wed his
mother. When nevertheless a son was born to him by hif
wife lokaste (or Epikaste, as she is styled in the epics), the
sister of the last Spartos Kreon, he pierced his feet, tied them
together, and caused him to be exposed on the neighbouring
Mount Kithairon, in order thus by the slaughter of his child
to make the fulfilment of the oracle impossible. The child
however was found by a herdsman, brought to Sekyon oi
Corinth before King Polybos, and by him adopted and called
Oidipus, i. e. (as popularly explained) Swell-foot. Wrier
grown up Oidipus questioned the oracle at Delphoi as to his
true origin, but received for answer only the ominous words
that he would go in unto his mother, bring into the world a
race loathsome to human sight, and slay the father who begot
him (Oidipus King, 791 if.). To make the threat futile he
did not return to Corinth ; while still near Delphoi however
he met his father Laios at a crossway, and on being insulted
slew him without recognising him.

169. Meanwhile Thebes had fallen into sore straits.
The Sphinx (< Strangler ) a monster compounded of the
upper part of a winged maiden and the lower part of a lion
with a snaky tail, and probably in origin a goblin-like ghost,
although later it was completely confused with the similarly
formed Egyptian and Babylonian symbol of power and speed
lodged on a hill near to the city, and set to every passer
by the riddle " Who is it that in the morning walks on four
legs, at mid-day on two, and in the evening on three ? "
All who failed to guess it she slew, among them, according

HEROIC POETRY 97

to the older legend, Kreon s son Haimon. Kreon was now
on the death of his brother-in-law Laios ruler in Thebes. He
promised as reward for liberation from this pest the hand of
the queen and the kingship of Thebes. Oidipus rightly ex
plained the riddle as meaning man, and became now king in
his native city as well as husband of his mother. According
to the older epos the gods made manifest this sin shortly after ;
Epikaste slew herself and Oidipus blinded himself, but after
wards begot by another wife Euryganeia the sons Eteokles and
Polyneikes as well as the two daughters Antigone and Ismene.
Later epos and the tragedians do not speak of any second
marriage of Oidipus, but make all these children his offspring
by lokaste herself. According to them his guilt was first
revealed by the seer Teiresias in consequence of his own
infatuation.

1 70. For an insignificant offence Oidipus afterwards laid
on his sons the curse that they should divide their inheritance
with the edge of the sword. He himself died in Thebes, or
in the Attic version of the story in exile at the sanctuary of
the Semnai in Kolonos, near Athens, under the protection of
Theseus.

171* In the division of their heritage and the kingdom
Eteokles and Polyneikes fell to quarrelling ; the latter then
fled to Adrastos, King of Argos and Sekyon. As son-in-
law of the latter he set on foot an expedition against his
brother. Adrastos himself undertook to lead it, and his
brother-in-law the Aitolian Tydeus, the valiant son of Oineus
of Kalydon, his brothers Hippomedon and Parthenopaios, the
mighty Kapaneus, and the brave seer Amphiaraos, another
brother-in-law, supported him. Amphiaraos indeed foresaw
that he would perish in the campaign, but was nevertheless in
duced to take a part by his wife Eriphyle, who had been bribed
by Polyneikes with a splendid necklace that brought disaster
to its owner. He therefore commanded his son Alkmaion
( the mighty one ) that he avenge his father s death on his
mother as soon as he had grown up.

172. In spite of signs prophetic of disaster the Seven,

98 HEROIC POETRY

confident in their own power, pressed onward against Thebes
and beset the seven gates of the city. Kapaneus had already
mounted the wall when the thunderbolt of Zeus hurled him
down again. The two brothers Eteokles and Polyneikes
slew one another in a duel. But the struggle was kept up
with terrible fury ; Tydeus indeed as he died mangled with his
teeth the head of his fallen opponent, and sucked his brain out
of his cloven skull. Amphiaraos sank alive with his chariot
near Thebes into a rift of the earth which Zeus opened up
before him by a blow of his thunderbolt. Here he ruled as a
spirit dispensing oracles by means of dreams ; he received
the same devout worship in other places, especially at Oropos,
where the site of his temple and his healing spring have
recently been brought to light (compare 4).

173. Of the Seven, according to the later version,
Adrastos alone escaped, being saved by his swift charger
Arion. The Thebans were persuaded by him, or, in the
Attic story, constrained by Theseus, to surrender the corpses
of the fallen Argives for burial. Aischylos and Sophokles
further connected with this the ruin of Antigone. According
to them, Polyneikes as enemy of his native land was doomed to
lie unburied. His sister Antigone however, in defiance of this
edict, laid him upon the funeral pile of Eteokles, or at least
covered him with earth. Seized by the appointed watchmen,
she was condemned to death for this deed, enjoined as it was
by sisterly love and divine law.

174. Ten years afterwards the sons of the fallen heroes,
the Epigonoi, now attended by the gods favour, marched against
Thebes, conquered and destroyed it, and established on the
throne Thersandros, the son of Polyneikes. The whole ex
pedition was thoroughly worked up by later poetry as a
counterpart of the first. Alkmaion, the leader of the host,
fulfilled before departure his father s injunction, and to avenge
him slew his mother. Although however Apollon himself
had given his approval to this, Alkmaion was pursued like
Orestes by the Erinyes until after long wanderings he found
final rest on the island of Acheloos in Akarnania, which had

HEROIC POETRY 99

just arisen from the sea and therefore was not defiled by the
murder of his mother.

X. The Achalan and Trojan Cycle. 175. The
excavations carried on from the year 1871 by H. Schliemann
and his able collaborator W. Dorpfeld have made it highly
probable that a real prehistoric event underlies the siege of
Troy described in Homer s Iliad. Upon the hill of His-
sarlik in the plain of the Troad depicted by Homer, and on
the same site as the later Ilion, arose over the remains of five
older foundations a mighty citadel with circling walls five
metres in thickness, built of great limestone slabs. It had
four gates and a doorway in the north-eastern tower ; on the
eastern side were three towers, of which one protected the
gate and another enclosed a well. Along the inside of the
wall ran a line built over with magazines, the roof of which
was probably a sheltered passage. Further inwards the citadel
rose in terraces ; the main streets were paved in the centre
with gypsum, and drains and walled wells were also found.
The whole foundation moreover seems to have been sud
denly consumed by a terrible fire. In this sixth stratum
sherds of earthenware jars certainly manufactured in Mykenai,
especially the hooped jugs peculiar to that city, are every
where mixed with the native pottery, which demonstrates not
only that this stratum was contemporary with the palmy days
of Mykenai (about 1400-1200 B.C.), but also that the two
cities had commercial relations with one another. Under
these circumstances the view generally accepted in later times,
which dated the destruction of Troy in the year 1184 B.C.,
may approximate to the truth, despite the inadequate grounds
which may have given birth to it.

176. The whole mass of legend was handled in several
epics, which, with their reputed authors and dates, are
I. The Kypria of a Cypriote poet, perhaps Stasinos, which
arose after the completion of the additions inserted into
the Iliad; 2. the Iliad of Homer, probably about 900
B.C.; 3. the Aithiopis of Arktinos of Miletos, about 750
B.C ; 4. the Little Iliad of the Lesbian Leeches, from the

first half of the seventh century ; 5. the Destruction of Ilios
( lAi ov Trepov.?), also by Arktinos ; 6. the Home-comings
(Noo-roi) by Agias of Trozen, later than Arktinos arid the
Odyssey ; 7. the Odyssey, about 800 B.C. ; 8. the Telegoneia
of Eugammon of Kyrene, about 570 B.C.

177. Apart from fragments and scanty epitomes, there
survive only the Iliad and Odyssey, which the ancients
already recognised to be the noblest flowers in the garland of
epic poetry. Both of these were formerly ascribed to the
single and unequalled poetical genius of Homer, although the
great discrepancies displayed both in the descriptions of social
conditions and in religious conceptions lead inevitably to the
conclusion that there were several authors of these poems, at
any rate in their present form. Seven cities disputed with
one another for the honour of claiming Homer as their own ;
Smyrna, which is first mentioned in the list, seems to have
the best right, for the Iliad itself shews that the poet pro
bably knew the country in the lower course of the Hermos.
In its original form the Iliad described only the disastrous
conflict between Achilleus and Agamemnon. Into this oldest
epic, which was the nucleus of the whole cycle of Trojan
story and contained the germs of all other poems in it, in
sertions of many sorts were later made, and the whole was
probably worked over ; but even in its present form the under
lying and dramatically shaped plan is so clearly discernibl

that there can be no doubt that this nucleus was the deliberate
creation of a single poet.

178. Corresponding with the so-called introductory
accord of the drama, the Iliad begins with a description of
the pestilence brought in the tenth year of the siege of Troy
upon the Greek host by Apollon on account of an insult to
his priest Chryses. The pride of Agamemnon, the com-
mander-in-chief, is responsible for the heavy loss and defeats
of the Greeks in the course of the main action ; and here he
excites the anger of Apollon by his refusal to give back to the
suppliant priest his abducted daughter. This is at once
followed by the exciting moment ; Achilleus, the noblest

HEROIC POETRY 101

hero in the Greek camp, demands of Agamemnon in the
name of the perishing army the restoration of Chryseis.
Thus the knot is tied ; Agamemnon indeed agrees to his
demand, but takes away from him Briseis, whom Achilleus
had received as a gift of honour from the army. Achilleus
now wrathfully withdraws from the contest, and at his
entreaty his mother Thetis prays Zeus as guide of battles to
vouchsafe victory to the Trojans until her son should have
received full satisfaction.

179. In Books II. VII. we have the first thickening
of the plot in the form of counterplay. First Agamemnon
tries to bring about a conclusion of the war without Achilleus
by means of a duel between Paris, the abductor of Helena,
and her lawful husband Menelaos ; the former is defeated,
Aphrodite rescuing him, but the compact is immediately
broken by a treacherous bow-shot of the Trojan Pandaros.
The Achaians now press forward, and in their advance
Diomedes, the son of Tydeus and ruler of Argos, who is
specially protected by Athena, and Aias the son of Telamon
of Salamis, the bravest of the Greek heroes after Achilleus,
distinguish themselves by single combats. Agamemnon
now fancies himself near to victory over Troy and at the
same time over his opponent Achilleus ; but Zeus, in com
pliance with the promise given to Thetis, forbids the gods to
take further part in the conflict. The Greeks in consequence
are driven back into their camp ; and here begins the second
thickening of the plot, this time in the main action (Books
VIII. XII).

1 80. Lest he should be compelled to humble himself
before Achilleus, Agamemnon makes the proposal, originally
no doubt in all seriousness, to entirely give up the siege.
But Diomedes and old Nestor, the ruler of the Messenian
and Triphylian Pylos, who is remarkable beyond all the other
generals for wisdom and eloquence, oppose him (Book II.).
The Greeks then make another bid for victory in the open
field, but suffer a complete defeat ; Agamemnon himself, like
most of the other heroes, is wounded (to Book XI.).

2 HEROIC POETRY

The climax ot the action and the apparently imminent
victory of the dramatic hero, Achilleus, are marked by the
< battle about the ships (Books XIII. XV.). Hektor, the
most valiant son of King Priamos of Troy, and Apollon press
into the Greek camp and set fire to the ships, by which the
destruction of the whole host becomes almost inevitable.
Now at the moment of supreme necessity comes the turning-
point (peripeteia}, which is moreover due to the vacillation of
Achilleus himself. Half relinquishing his decision, he sends
his friend Patroklos in his own panoply at the head of his
Myrmidones to aid the distressed Greeks. They drive the
enemy out of the camp ; but when, contrary to his friend s
command, Patroklos pursues the Trojans, he is slain by
Hektor (Book XVI.).

1 8 1. Here begins the declining action (Books XVII.
XXL). The moment of final intensity consists in the restora
tion of Briseis to Achilleus and the humiliation of Agamemnon.
But now Achilleus victory is but the semblance of a victory,
as he himself fully recognises. For he too, hero as he is,
has brought on his head the guilt of pride (hybris ) by having
for so long looked in inaction upon the ruin of his people in
revenge for the personal insult done to him by Agamemnon.
This guilt of his brings about the death of Patroklos, and
therewith the catastrophe (Book XXII.). After getting
through his mother new arms from Hephaistos, Achilleus
slays Hektor, although he knows well that he himself must
die soon after the fall of this foe, and the fatally wounded
Hektor himself reminds him of his now impending doom.
The action dies away in the burial of Patroklos and Hektor
and the wail of Achilleus for the loss of his friend, in which
he prepares himself for his imminent death, so that the latter
in Homer only in a certain sense takes place behind the
scene.

1 82. The Odyssey, said to have been the model for all poets
describing the home-coming of the heroes of Troy, is also
clearly based on a uniform plan, and afterwards expanded by
insertions. To the latter notably belongs the whole Tele-

HEROIC POETRY 103

macheia (Books I. IV.), in which is described Telemachos
journey to Pylos and Lakonia, as well as the greater part of
the last book and the poem treating of the passage of Odys
seus into the nether world, which though inserted in late
times may itself be very old. To gain information as to the
abode of his father Odysseus, who has been absent nearly
twenty years, Telemachos visits old Nestor and then Menelaos.
Both tell him of the home-coming of themselves and the
other heroes ; from the latter he also learns that his father is
detained in the far West upon the island of the nymph
Kalypso. But before Telemachos returns to Ithaka Odys
seus himself has already arrived there. Thus his enterprise
has no influence on the course of events.

183. The old Home-coming of Odysseus, which was created
out of disjointed primitive lays, depicted only the last year,
/ . e. the proper catastrophe, while preceding events were
mentioned in the course of the narrative, as in the Iliad ; and
this proves that the author was an imitator of the poet of
the Iliad, which he used as a model. After Odysseus, the
ruler of the little island of Ithaka, has lost his comrades and
ships on his wanderings in the return from Troy, he lives for
seven years, consumed with longing for his home, on the
island of Ogygia with Kalypso ( Concealer ), who strives
to bind him permanently to herself. In Ithaka he is awaited
with equal yearning by his faithful wife Penelope, who is
wooed by numerous arrogant suitors. Moved by Athena s
requests, Zeus at length commands the nymph to let Odysseus
go. He sails on a raft until close to the island of the
Phaiakes. Here, however, Poseidon shatters his craft ; and
it is only with the aid of the goddess Ino-Leukothea that he
can swim to the beach.

184. Nausikaa, the daughter of King Alkinoos, gives
him clothing and leads him into the palace of her father. At
mealtime he recounts himself his previous adventures. He
lost many of his comrades in battle with the brave Kikones ;
others, who had tasted the sweet fruit of the lotus in the land
of the Lotus-eaters (lotophagoi], he had been compelled to drag

J 4 HEROIC POETRY

by force back to the ships, for enjoyment of the lotus had
made them forget fatherland and friends. Then he fell into
the cave of the one-eyed Kyklops Polyphemos, who devoured
several of his shipmates, but at last was made drunk and
blinded by Odysseus as he slept. Polyphemos being a son
of Poseidon, the latter was now wroth with the returning
travellers. They came to Aiolos, the ruler of the winds,
and he graciously confined all the contrary winds in a skin,
so that they would have reached home in safety if Odysseus
comrades had not secretly opened the skin.

185. All the ships except the one on which was Odysseus
himself were now shattered by the gigantic Laistrygones.
With the last he landed on the island of the enchantress
Kirke, who first turned a part of his crew into swine ; but
when threatened by Odysseus himself she restored them to
their human shape, and all were now kindly entertained by
her. Instructed at length by her as to the way leading home,
they prepared after a year s stay to continue their journey.
Passing the island of the vulture-shaped Sirens (Seirenes],
who enchanted men by their song and then slew them, he
voyaged on between the seats of the sea-monsters Skylla and
Charybdis to the island of Thrinakia, 1 where under the in
fluence of hunger his shipmates slaughtered kine from the
sacred herds of Helios. As punishment for this the lightning
of Zeus shattered the last ship ; only Odysseus himself, who
had not shared in the sin, escaped on the mast, and after being
tossed about for nine days reached the island of Kalypso.

1 86. Alkinoos, touched with compassion at this narrative,
now sends the man of many woes with rich gifts to Ithaka in a
swift ship. Lest he be at once recognised, his guardian goddess
Athena gives him the semblance of an old beggar. In this
form he visits his herdsman Eumaios, and hears from him of
the arrogance of his wife s wooers. Only to his son Tele-
machos does he reveal who he is ; but his old hound and his
nurse Eurykleia also recognise him, despite his transformation,

1 Apparently the name Trinakria given to Sicily is the same word
but altered by popular etymology, which connected it with &icpa.

HEROIC POETRY 105

whilst he is staying in his own house as a beggar. Penelope
has just announced that she will wed him who can bend the
bow of her dead husband and shoot an arrow through the
eyes of twelve axes placed one behind the other. The
suitors all strive in vain ; at length Odysseus fulfils the task.
He now reveals himself, and with the support of his son and
the two faithful herdsmen Eumaios and Philoitios lays all the
suitors low after a furious battle. Penelope now receives the
news of her husband s return. Lastly he visits his old father
Laertes, who cultivates a farm in the neighbourhood.

The works of art relating to the Theban and Trojan
cycles of legends are collected in Overbeck, Bildiverke zum
thebanischen und troischen Heldenkreis.

NOTE. The view summarily set forth in 176 above, that the
Iliad and Odyssey are the oldest of the great epics, and the models
of all others, is that held by Aristarchos in antiquity and by many
other scholars. None the less it is hardly tenable. There is no suffi
cient evidence, internal or external, that as a whole the other epics
were later. They contained doubtless late passages ; but so does the
Iliad. The whole mass of these epics really formed a Corpus ; the
earliest and best tradition known to us assigned the authorship of
the whole to Homer. On the other hand, later traditions assigned
one poem to Arktinos, another to Stasinos, and so forth ( 176).
The inference is clear. There were once famous minstrels Romeros,
Arktinos, Stasinos, and others whose names survived in local
legend, sometimes perhaps attached to a particular poem. The
most renowned was Homeros, and hence many attributed the com
position of all the epics to him ; later, when popular favour had
selected two poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, as the best of the whole
series, these two were alone ascribed to him. Meanwhile stu
dents disinterred the names of Stasinos and the others from local
legends, and assigned to each of them the authorship of one of the
now anonymous poems, and thus was formed the catalogue of 176.

io6 MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION OF

Mythology and Religion of the Romans.

187. In religion, as in all other spheres of mental life
Greek influences gradually ousted the native Roman spirit
or at least filled the simple old forms with a new content
This process began as early as the reign of the seconc
Tarquinius, Greek conceptions finding their way into Rome
through the medium either of the Etruscans or of colonies
in Lower Italy like Cumae. From about the time of the
Second Punic War they began, at any rate in cultured circles
to completely destroy the old faith, until finally almost al
worships that were in existence anywhere in the might)
empire were transferred to Rome. All statements which
we find in authors as to the circumstances of the old Romar
religion have already taken their colouring from this Greek
tendency ; only the festival calendar, which was set up before
this period, and the existence of certain priesthoods, the
foundation of which goes back to this earliest period, supply
reliable if scant information as to what was genuinely Roman.
These earliest testimonies shall therefore serve in the following
exposition as landmarks, in order to exclude, as far as is
possible, all that was imported from Greece into the religion
of Rome.

I. Indeterminately conceived beings. 188. By
the side of the true divinities we find in Roman belief a series
of figures which have neither developed into uniform concep
tions nor grown into complete personalities, but have remainec
in the sphere of ancestor-worship and daemonism.

( I ) Among them the ghosts in the proper sense the
Manes, Lemures, and Larvae take the first place. The souls
of the departed in later times are usually designated by the
flattering name of manes, pure or good ones, or generally
as inferi, infernal ones. Of these, each family paid especial
reverence to the spirits of its own ancestors as the di inferum
parentium, and as di parentes or patni. A conscientious

THE ROMANS 107

observance of all the rules of ceremonious burial was rigidly
insisted upon ; even after cremation of the dead had become
usual, the old customs applicable to burial were kept unaltered.
On the Qth, nth, and 1 3th of May were celebrated the
Lemuria, on which the souls were believed to arise from their
graves in the form of goblins (Lemures or Larvae]. As a
universal festival of atonement and worship of the dead, men
also celebrated at the end of the old Roman year the dies
parentales from the 1 3th to the 2 ist of February, and especially
the Feralia on the last of these days, by presenting offerings of
food and drink at the graves. The resemblance of the dead
to a sleeper led on the other hand, as the grave-inscriptions
shew, to a belief in later times that he slumbers in the grave
in everlasting tranquillity and happiness (compare 213, Deities
of Death}.

(2) Closely allied to the ghosts are the Genii, representing
the man s powers of life and reproduction, and the lunones of
the women, which in their character exactly correspond to
them. On birth they enter into human beings, on death they
leave them ; then they become Manes, and, exactly like the
souls of the departed, they are depicted under the form of a
snake. At the same time however the Genius or the luno
is a deity worshipped as guardian spirit in the human being,
by which men swear and to which an offering is presented on
birthdays.

Starting from this conception of a personal guardian spirit
with powers of reproduction, men later came to attribute
Genii to the family, the city, the state, and finally to any place
wheresoever a creative energy might display itself, and thus
actually assigned to them the part of true nature-spirits.

189. (3) A midway position like that of these Genii is
occupied by the kindred Lares, who were regarded as guardian
spirits of meadows, vineyards, roads, and groves, as well as of
the house itself, but at the same time were honoured by various
rites corresponding exactly to the worship of the dead. In
earlier times, as a rule, mention is made only of a single lar
familiaris, who guards and represents the hearth and home;

io8 MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION OF

later however they always appear in pairs. Their exactlj
similar pairs of little wooden images were set up over the
hearth in the Atrium ; at every meal, and especially on tht
Calends, Nones, and Ides, and at all family feasts the housewife
offered to them a little food and a fresh crown.

(4) Under the title Di Penates, the figures of whom wen
likewise set up on the hearth, were comprised again all the
gods which were looked upon as guardians of the store-roorr
(penus} in the house, although apparently the same deities
were not everywhere understood by the name ; lanus, luppiter.
and Vesta are mentioned among them. From the individua
house their worship was translated, like that of the Genius, tc
the civic community, and hence these Penates Publici were
honoured on the State Hearth in the temple of Vesta.

190. (5) Quite peculiar to Roman religion, and conceivec
without any traits of personal character, are the Indigete.
or Workers Within, the spirits bringing to pass any par
ticular activity in certain persons or things. To each of these
beings was ascribed one single strictly limited sphere of oper
ation, which was exactly determined by the spirit s name :
hence heed had to be paid that the right Indiges should be
called upon for aid at the right moment. The priestly college
of the Pontifices, which had supreme functions of superintend
ence in these matters as well as in other questions of cult
was inspired by a striving for accuracy and definiteness tc
construct especially, as it would seem, in the course o:
the fourth century B.C. an almost endless series of these
Spirits of Actions, on the model of older single figures of thi:
sort. But as a natural result of this exaggeration these
Indigetes soon lost their importance ; at any rate their whole
cult had already fallen into decay by the time of the Seconc
Punic War. How artificial these distinctions were is provec
e. g, by the fact that it was necessary to invoke Abeona wher
a child first walked out of the house and Adeona when ii
returned, as well as Domiduca and Iterduca.

II. Nature-Spirits and Deities closely akin tc
the Spirits of Actions. 191. (i) The only nature-

THE ROMANS 109

spirits with a fully developed personality in Rome are the
representatives of the powers at work in springs and rivers.
As in Greece, the former were usually conceived as female
beings ; they were worshipped in the grove surrounding their
spring, but early developed likewise into goddesses of sooth
saying and song, as well as into helpers in painful childbirth.
On the former ground the Camenae, who were native to a
grove before the Porta Capena, were later completely identified
with the Greek Muses, whilst the closely allied Egeria, the
soothsaying wife of King Numa, who also dwelt in this grove,
was mainly invoked as a goddess of birth. Both properties
appear in Carmenta, the mother of Evander, who probably
gets her name from carmen, * prophecy. The spring-
goddess luturna again, whose name was borne by several
springs in Latium, was as wife of lanus made the mother of
Fons or Fontus, the spring itself conceived as a god.

192. Of the river-gods, Pater Tiberinus enjoyed the
highest honours in Rome. A special college of priests, the
Pontifices or * bridge-makers, was entrusted with the making
of the Pans Sublicius or pile-bridge leading over the river. So
highly were they esteemed that they gradually rose to be a
board of superintendence in all matters of religion. The
high antiquity of their foundation is indicated by a regulation
according to which no iron might be used in the building of
the bridge. Equally primitive is the sacrifice of the so-called
Arge t, in which dolls made of reeds were in later times cast
down into the stream from this bridge in place of earlier
human offerings. In Lavinium again men worshipped the
god of the river Numicius, in Umbria the Clitumnus, and
in Campania the Volturnus.

193. By the side of the spirits thus confined to a single
spring or river, Neptunus, as representative of water in general,
seems in earlier times to stand entirely in the background.
To him however were celebrated the Neptunalia in the
hottest month, on the 23rd of July, probably to induce him
to vouchsafe the needful moisture. He certainly did not
become a proper god of the sea until his identification with

no MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION OF

Poseidon, whose service was introduced into Rome in th
year 399 B.C. at the command of the Sibylline Books.

194. (2) Among the deities worshipped from the earlies
times the following are fairly near to the above mentionet
Spirits of Actions lanus the god of the door-way (ianus
or of the whole door of the house (ianua), Vesta the goddes
of the fire on the hearth, Volcanus the creator of conflagration
the war-god Mars, Saturnus and Consus the gods of seed am
harvest, and the whole series of the gods and goddesses activi
in vegetation.

Ianus developed from being the spirit and guardian of th<
single door into the representative of entrances in general, anc
thus into the god of commencement, as both these ideas are
expressed by the one word initium. Consequently the begin
ning of the day and of the month, i.e. the morning (lanm
Matutinus} and all the Calends, are sacred to him ; his montl
lanuariusj which coincides with the beginning of the increase
of the day s length, was promoted later to be the propel
commencement of the year. 1 On the 9th of January, at thf
sacrificial festival held in his honour (jlgonium), the bell
wether of a flock was offered to him originally by the kin
himself, who obviously had taken the place of the house
father when the domestic worship of Ianus was transferred tc
the State, and later by the Rex Sacrorum. He is first invoked
at the beginning of all actions, particularly in prayers and
sacrifices ; indeed he is regarded, even in early times, as
the very principium and father of the gods.

195. The god s chief sanctuary, Ianus Geminus 01
Quirlnusj lay on the northern side of the Forum opposite
the temple of Vesta, which was regarded as the hearth oi
the community ; it was the primitive vaulted gateway or

1 An old goddess of the happy new year is perhaps Diva
Angerona, worshipped on the zist of December, who is represented
with her mouth closed or covered by her ringer (comp tre fa-vett
linguii, fliifirj/Li.f ire). On the other hand Anna Peranna or Perenna,
the goddess of the expiring year, whose festival was held on the
1 5th of March, is to be regarded as representing the change of the
year.

THE ROMANS in

entrance of the Forum, which was built on the model of
the domestic atrium. The door fixed on the two sides of the
passage were kept open as long as an army was in the field,
probably because at one time the king himself marched out
to the wars, and for him the door of the city, as for the
house-father the door of the house, had to remain open until
he returned home. Under the arch of the gate stood the
statue of the god, with a double face looking towards both
the entrance and exit. Though this shape was probably
created from Greek models, it nevertheless was certainly
meant to express the vigilance appropriate to a door-keeper.
Like a real door-keeper (lanitor] he holds a key and a rod
or stick (<virga} to keep off troublesome intruders ; his activity
is characterised by the names Patulcius ( opener ) and
Clusivius or Clusius ( closer ).

Another chief seat of his ancient worship was the hill
called from his name the laniculum, on which King Ancus
Marcius constructed a fortification to guard the trade-route
leading from Etruria into the harbour of the Tiber at the foot
of the hill. Thus from being a god of ingoing and outgoing
he came to be the guardian of traffic and shipping ; his head,
with the prow of a ship, was put on the oldest Roman coin,
the yfs, and later the real harbour-god Portunus was represented
in a shape resembling his.

196. Vesta, like the Hestia of the Greeks, embodies the
power at work in the fire of the hearth, a power which men
worshipped in the fire itself without a special figure of the
goddess. The city too had its communal hearth with its
Vesta and Penates, which in Rome stood in a little round
temple on the southern side of the Forum. The service of
the goddess was performed by six virgins who were chosen by
the Pontifex Maximus in their childhood and were compelled
to remain unwedded for thirty years. If one of these Vestals
allowed the sacred fire to go out or became guilty of unchas-
tity, she was condemned by the Pontifex Maximus to the
severest penalties ; and the holy fire had to be kindled anew
by means of the ancient fire-drill or later by burning-glasses.

in MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION OF

The Vestalia, the chief festival of the goddess, fell on t
9th of June ; on this day the matrons presented offerings
food on the communal hearth.

197. A complement and counterpart to this benefactre
of mankind is Volcanus, representing the power of
destroying all the works of man s hand, that is, as god
conflagration. As on this account he had to be kept far fro
the houses of the city, he had his temple outside in t!
Campus Martius. His chief festival, the folcanalia, w
celebrated on the 23rd of August, at the time when after tl
harvest-home the full garners especially needed his protectio
In order that he might assuage the fire when once broken o
he was styled also Mulciber^ mitis, or quietus. He may ha
been in the first instance connected with the lightning-fir
because the latter also causes conflagrations ; he is howev
invoked in old prayers together with Maia, the goddess
earth s fertility worshipped in May, and so it appears mo
probable that his influence was seen generally in the fire i
the lightning and sun under all circumstances. It was perha;
only through identification with Hephaistos that he becarr
god of the smith s craft and of volcanoes.

198. Saturnus, Census, and Ops, the deities protectin
agriculture, have preserved in the same way as Volcanus tl
character of spirits of actions. Saturnus or Saeturnus is tr
god of sowing ; after the completion of the autumn sowin
the festival of the Saturnalia was held in his honour from tl
1 7th to the 2 1st or 23rd of December with revelry, exchanj
of gifts, and liberation of slaves from their wonted toils. Tr
wax candles which regularly formed a part of the presen
undoubtedly typified the now beginning increase in the sun
light, which permitted the hope that the seed hidden in tr
earth would thrive. His old sanctuary and his temple, whic
was built by Tarquinius Superbus, stood on the slope leadir
from the Forum to the Capitol.

Census on the other hand is the god of harvest, the dei
condendi or deity of the stowing-away of the fields produo
As this however was originally stored in subterranean chan

THE ROMANS 113

bers, the old altar of Census in the Circus Maximus was
commonly hidden in the earth, and only dug up and laid bare
for sacrificial uses during the festival of the Consualia, which
were celebrated with races on the 2ist of August and the
1 5th of December.

Ops Consiva, / . e. Ops as wife of Census, is closely con
nected with the latter. She represents the opimafrugum cofia,
or " foison plenty," which is stowed away at harvest-time ;
her two feasts, the Opiconsivia and the Opalia, are separated
from those of her husband by an interval of only three days.
Later Saturnus was identified with Kronos, Ops with Rhea,
and many peculiarities of the Greek cult were transferred to
the Roman.

J 99 (3) The v ta ^ ener gy at work in wood and field
was ascribed to the activity of various creative and receptive
gods and goddesses. Peasants and herdsmen who thought
that they owed to them the produce of the soil and increase of
their herds paid honour to them ; and like their worshippers
the gods dwelt by preference in shadowy groves and by
purling springs. Their character was as simple and rustic
as the minds of their worshippers, and everything that was
dear to the countryman was placed under their protection.

Faunus, the husband or father of Fauna, who was
generally invoked as Bona Dea, is designated as the * kindly
god by his name, which is derived from favere, to be
favourable. He appears in human form under the Greek
name of Evander, the goodman, who was said to have
founded the first settlement on the site of the later Rome. Of
this Evander the story was also told that he set up the oldest
sanctuary of Faunus in a cavern on the Palatine Hill and
established the festival of the Lupercalia held there on the
1 5th of February, in which the Luperci or priests of Faunus
Lupercus ( Wolf- Faunus ), naked but for a girdle of a
goat s skin, sought to secure fertility for men, beasts, and
fields by running round the old domain of the city. In
agreement with this Faunus was himself figured as naked,
with a goat s skin, crown, horn of plenty, and drinking-horn.

i

,i 4 MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION OF*

8 200. Very near to him is Silvanus, the forest-spirit
whose activity however, as his very name indicates .con
Terned more exclusively with the woodlands, and hence
arthe has a pine crown in his hair and a twig of pine on h.
am Like P Faunus, he terrifies the lonely wanderer by th
prophetic voices of the forest ; Silvanus however is especiall
the guardian of boundaries and of property in general.

In the luxuriant fertility of the fields and vineyards agai
men saw specifically the energy of Liber and his wife Libera
STese, like luppiter Liber, were characterised by their nam
a the libera dispensers of plenty, but later were regularl
identified with Dionysos and Persephone. The latter s nan-
was changed in Italy" into the form Proser^a, probably und
The influence of the Indigital goddess presiding over the seed
unward climbing (proserpere ; see 190).
P In the same way too (he gardens and then- fruitj-tre* ; stan
under the special guardianship of Vertumnus, who chang
his form as the garden in the different seasons changes _!
appearance, and Sf Pomona, the comely bestower of firm
both were characterised by the pruning-kniie.

5 2 oi. Among the goddesses of fertility Fauna or Bo
Dea takes highest rank. Her most venerated sanctuary
Rome, the foundation of which was commemorated on the
of Mav lay at the foot of the Aventme ; her chief -stn
S wa s celebrated by the Vestal Virgins and the nob

like her husband Faunus she holds a horn of

" Besides the above mentioned Libera and Pomona Feron
Flora Pales, and perhaps Diana are akin to the Bona D

The Feronia of Central Italy had her chief places
worship in a grove at Capena on Soracte in , Er -d
another near Tarracina in the neighbourhood of the Pompt
Marshes ; in Rome a festival in her honour was held m

THE ROMANS "5

middle of November on the Campus Martius. She is
always invoked as bestowing a blessing on the harvest ; as
however slaves enjoyed many liberties on all harvest festivals,
the emancipation of slaves was often performed in the temple
of this goddess.

202. Flora, also native to Central Italy, is in a more
restricted sense the goddess of flowers, and hence also the
dispenser of fertility. In Rome she possessed a very ancient
temple upon the Quirinal. On the 2 8th of April was celebrated
the flower-festival of the Floralia with wild dances and coarse
jests ; scenic shows and circus games were later added.
With her was connected Robigus, the god guarding the corn
from mildew (robigo}.

Pales on the other hand is the patron deity of pastures and
herds of cattle ; her name indeed is connected with pasco
graze (compare Pan, 90). In Rome she had her seat
upon the Palatine, which probably derives its name from her ;
on the 2 ist of April the Par dia were held in her honour, in
which sheep and stables were cleansed and sanctified by water
and bloodless sacrifices. With the same purpose herdsmen and
herds leaped between piles of blazing straw, much as at the
festival of Feronia, and in Germany at the Osterfeuer and
Johannisfeuer.

203. Finally Diana too belongs in all probability to
this series of goddesses of fertility. Like the others, she
was worshipped in well-watered groves (Diana Nemorensis ) ,
particularly on Mount Tifata near Capua and at Aricia in the
neighbourhood of Tusculum. At Aricia her priesthood
devolved upon him who slew her former priest with a branch
broken off in the holy grove obviously a kind of human
sacrifice offered with the aid of the goddess herself, who was
potent in her trees. In Rome her ancient temple lay on the
Aventine, and here, as throughout Italy, her chief festival was
celebrated on the Ides of August, on which day Vertumnus
also received a sacrifice. In Aricia a torchlight procession
was brought to her in the early morning ; in the same way
Pales at sunrise and Flora were celebrated with kindling of

H6 MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION OF

lights. 1 Like Feronia she protects slaves, and in particula:
those who had taken refuge in her sacred wood and wen
being pursued like the hunted deer. Like the Bona Dea als<
she is worshipped above all by women, and invoked as give
of fertility and of easy childbirth. This quality is perhap
the reason that several of her temples, especially those a
Tusculum, Aricia, and Rome, were regarded as the federa
sanctuaries of various Latin tribes. Afterwards Diana, as ;
goddess of groves and fertility, was completely identified wit!
Artemis, and thence became the goddess of the chase, an<
finally also the moon-goddess, a conception which only he
festival on the Ides can justify us in attributing to the nativ
Diana.

204. (4) A god worshipped from the earliest times b;
all the tribes of Central Italy is Mars, Marmar ( Slayer ?)
Mamers or Mavors, who bears the ancient by-name Gradivu
( the approaching one, i.e. apparently the foot-soldier )
He is closely related to the Spirits of Actions in so far as h
represents mainly the divine power at work in war, althoug
his activity is not restricted to so narrow a field as that c
the Indigetes of later times who arose from the artificial w:
of priests.

205. In the old king s house at Rome, the Regia, wer
preserved the sacred spear of Mars and a shield that had falle
from heaven (ancile),on the model of which King Numa ha
caused eleven other shields to be made. Furnished with these
the twelve Palatine Salii ( Springers ), the priests of Man
performed armed dances in the god s sacred month whil
singing ancient songs in which he was called upon to prote<
the meadows, field-produce, and vineyards. That thi
ceremony marks the beginning of the war-season, which w;
limited to the summer, is made fairly clear by th
significance of his other festivals; for on the 2yth <
February and on the 1 4th of March were held near the ol
altar of Mars in the middle of the Campus Martius th
1 The Mater Matuta too, for whom the Matralla ( matron
festival ) were held, was a goddess both of dawn and of birth.

THE ROMANS 7

Equirria, consisting of a review of horses and a chariot-race,
and again on the I9th and 23rd of the same month, at the
festivals of the Quinquatrus and Tubilustrium, weapons and
military trumpets were examined and purified. Similarly
after the end of the war-season, on the I9th of October,
a purification of weapons {Armilustrium) was held; and to
the Equirria of spring certainly corresponded the sacrifice
of the October Horse, as on the 1510 of October a
horse that had been a winner in the preceding chariot-
race was slaughtered to Mars. Moreover the dedica
tion of the so-called ver sacrum, i. e. the vow made on the
occasion of severe misfortunes to sacrifice the expected
produce of the coming spring, whether man, cattle, or fruits,
shews Mars to be a god of war, for it was in stress of war as
a rule that this vow was made.

Men regarded as sacred to him the wolf, the type of blood
shed, and the woodpecker (picus], whose beak, piercing trees as
a battering-ram pierces gates, and plume-like head-feathers
suggested the idea of a bird of war. Hence it was a she-wolf
that suckled Romulus and Remus, for the war-god himself
was their father and thus the ancestor of the warlike Romans.

206. So closely akin to Mars was Quirinus, the chief
god of the Sabines settled on the Quirinal Hill, that it was
possible for the worship of the two to completely coalesce.
Nevertheless there remained by the side of the Flamen
Martialis or special priest of Mars a particular Flamen
Quirinalis, and by the side of the Palatine Salii of Mars there
were twelve special Salii of Quirinus who had their seat on
the Quirinal. While Mars however was regarded as the
father of Romulus, Quirinus was in later times quite identified
with Romulus. The ritual of the Quirina/ia, held on
the i yth of February, seems to afford a further indication that
he too was looked upon as an ancestral god.

III. luppiter and luno. 207. The mightiest
phenomenon that manifests itself in the atmosphere is the
storm ; hence luppiter, to whose agency it is ascribed, is
regarded like Zeus in Greece as the most potent god, who

ii8 MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION OF

rules over all else. He carries as his weapon the thunderbolt
and in the earliest times he is himself called Fulgur, the
lightning. He gives signs by means of lightnings and birds
to observe and interpret which was the function of the priestl)
college of Augures ; but he sends also the fertilising storm-
rain, and in continued drought he is hence called upon a
Elicius, the evoker of the rain. Thus he becomes the
dispenser of fertility and rich plenty, and has as his chie!
quality liberalitas, generosity. From this point of view he
bears the by-name of Liber. To him are held the festival
connected with the culture of the vine, the VinaTia Rustica
on the 1 9th of August, the Meditr malia on the nth oi
October, and the Vlnalia of the 23rd of April. Agriculture,
cattle-rearing, and the youthful population stand under his
protection; a chapel of luventas ( youth ) hence formed
part of his temple on the Capitol.

208. The phenomena of the storm threatening man with
destruction were on the other hand ascribed to a god that grew
out of luppiter, Veiovis or Vediovis, i.e. the evil luppiter.
His sanctuary stood between the two summits of the Capitoline
Hill ; he himself was represented as youthful, with a bundle
of thunderbolts or arrows in his hand.

Summanus, the god of the nightly storms arising sub mane,
towards morning, was similarly evolved out of luppiter. It
remains questionable whether the old by-name Lucetius, the
light or glistening one, designates luppiter as the god of
the light of heaven, or whether it is not equally to be referred
to the rlash of the thunderbolt, or glare of the storm.

209. As luppiter Stator the mighty storm-god becomes a
helper in battle, as Victor a dispenser of victory. To luppiter
Feretrius the victorious general offers in dedication the spolia
opima, the panoply of the enemy s commander whom he has
slain with his own hand. His servants were the Fetiales, who
with solemn ceremonies demanded satisfaction for outrages,
proclaimed wars, and concluded treaties ; for his thunderbolt
punished the perjured who wronged one of them. For the
same reason luppiter was generally invoked as god of oaths ;

THE ROMANS "9

Deus Fidius, the god of good faith, was actually designated
as the Genius of luppiter, and the sanctuary of Fides, Good
Faith conceived as a goddess, stood from the earliest times
immediately by his Capitoline temple. In the latter was the
sacred boundary-stone, the symbol of Terminus ( Boundary ),
to characterise luppiter as the guardian of bounds and
property.

One of the oldest places of his worship was a sacred grove
on the summit of the Alban Mount, where formerly the Latin
communities under the presidency of Alba Longa had met to
worship luppiter Latiaris, the protector of Latium. The
younger Tarquinius built a temple there, as he built that on
the Capitol. Here were celebrated the Feriae Lat mae with
sacrifices and games ; and generals to whom the Senate had
denied a regular triumph on the Capitol often proceeded to
this sanctuary to dedicate their booty.

210. When Rome however had won predominance in
Latium, the temple on the southern height of the Capitol
became the most revered place of his worship ; for in the same
way as Rome herself dictated her laws to the world the
Roman luppiter Capltolinus or Optimus Maximus ruled heaven
and earth. He is the proper lord and guardian of the free
state ; to him therefore the general on his triumphal return
pays the due meed of thanks, riding in triumph up to the
Capitol with the god s attributes and robes as his adornment,
in order to lay the laurel of victory in the bosom of the god
who vouchsafes success, and to dedicate in his temple the
most precious part of the booty. In his honour were held
the most important games, the Ludi Magnl, out of which
later grew up the Ludi Roman i and Plebei.

21 1. On the Capitol were venerated by his side his wife
luno and his daughter Minerva. In consequence his temple
had a triple cella ; the central department belonged to luppiter
himself, that on his left to luno, and that on his right to
Minerva. The combination of these three deities was indeed
quite Greek in origin, but had been adopted in Etruria and
thence transplanted towards the end of the royal age to Rome.

izo MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION OF

The first servant of luppiter was the Flamen Dialis, who
presented the offering on all the Ides or days of full moon
all of which were sacred to luppiter, and in general on the
festivals of this god ; his wife, the Flamin tca, is the priestes
of luno. Their married life was meant to typify that of the
divine pair which they represented.

212. The worship of luno extended from early time
over all Italy, especially among the Latins, Oscans, anc
Umbrians ; among the first her name was given to a month
lunius or lunonius, on the Calends of which was held in
Rome the festival of luno Moneta ( the inspirer of love or
admonisher ?), probably to commemorate her wedding with
luppiter. This luno had an ancient temple on the Capitol ;
in its precincts were kept the geese which were famous as the
saviours of the city. As wife of luppiter Rex she is styled
Regina, and among the Marsi, as a mere female complement
to him, lovia Regena; her son Mars was born on the 1st ol
March, on which the women celebrated in her honour the
Matronal ia or matrons feast. All Calends, or days of new
moon, are sacred to her, perhaps because she was also regarded
as a moon-goddess. With this possibly is connected her
by-name Lucetia, the glistening one, although the kindred
name Lucina ( she who brings to the light ) characterised
her as a goddess of delivery. luno Lucina, who on works
of art often holds in her arms a child in swaddling-clothes,
had a grove of hoary antiquity on the Esquiline, but was much
worshipped throughout Italy. As goddess of wedlock she is
also called luno luga or lugalis, the marriage-maker, or
Pronuba, guide of the bride. The by-name of Sosplta,
especially in use at Lanuvium, characterises her on the other
hand as a guardian or saviour in general ; in this conception
she is armed with shield and spear and wears a goatskin over
her head, shoulders, and back. Like luppiter Rex, luno
Regina carries the sceptre as emblem.

IV. Deities of Death. 213. In Rome the idea of
a uniform realm of the dead did not become general, and
hence there was no development of independent deities con-

THE ROMANS m

ceived as its rulers. Only the approach of death was ascribed
to the activity of a god of sometimes terrible and sometimes
kindly power, who was styled Orcus ; his figure however
was not developed with any completeness. By his side
appears under various names a motherly nurse of the departed,
who seems to be properly Mother Earth herself 1 (Tel/us or
Terra Mater), in so far as the latter receives the dead into
her bosom. From the Manes and Lares she is also named
Mania or Lara and Larunda, from the Larvae A<via Larvarum
or grandmother of the ghosts, and like the latter conceived
in a hideous form. Finally she was called from the silence of
the dead Dea Muta or Tacita, the mute goddess. Perhaps
too Acca Larentia ( mother of the Lares ?), to whom
funeral offerings were brought at the festival of the Larentalia
on the 23rd of December, belongs to the same connection, for
she appears like Tellus herself to have also the character of a
goddess of earth s fertility.

V. Personifications. 214. By transferring to the
spheres of abstract thought and morals the conceptions which
had aroused the belief in the Indigetes or spirits of actions,
the Romans early arrived at a worship of real personifications.
Among the oldest of these are Fortuna, the goddess of goo J
luck, usually characterised by a rudder and horn of plenty ;
Fides, Good Faith, with ears of corn and a basket of fruit ;
Concordia, or Harmony, with a horn of plenty and patera ;
Honos and Virtus, the god of Honour and the goddess repre
senting valour, both equipped with arms ; Sfes or Hope, with
a flower in her hand ; Pudicit ia or Chastity, veiled ; and Salus,
or Salvation. Later were added Pietas, love for parents,
Libertas, Freedom, Febns, the goddess of ague, dementia,
Mildness, with a patera and sceptre, Pax, the goddess of
peace, with the olive-branch ; and at last in the Imperial
Age it became the custom to personify in the form of a
woman characterised by appropriate attributes any abstract idea
that took the fancy.

1 As a mother Tellus was especially worshipped by the Fardicldia,
a sacrifice of pregnant cows.

122 MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION OF

VI. Deities of Foreign Origin. 215. Toward
the end of the royal period the Etruscan cuhure, and through
its medium that of Greece, which was already dominant in
Lower Italy, gained influence in Rome also. Notably th
Sibylline Books from Cumae, which contained a collection
of Greek oracular utterances, led to the introduction of quiti
a number of Greek worships into Rome. In this proces
either the qualities of the foreign deity were transferred to
one of the numerous native Spirits of Action to which it wa;
itself nearly akin in character, or else the foreign name wa
adopted together with the foreign conception. Thus Minervc
originally was in all probability nothing but the divine powe
effecting thought and understanding in man, and thereby thi
tutelary spirit of artistic activity. Her inclusion in thi
Capitoline trinity ( 21 1) she owes solely to her identification
with Pallas Athena, whose qualities were transferred to her
except that she did not become a true goddess of war.

216. Similarly Venus, whose name is connected witl
venustus and the German Ji^onne, had in the earliest times n<
cult in Rome. She is the Greek Aphrodite, who from Lowe
Italy and afterwards from Mount Eryx in Sicily founc
entrance into Rome under this name, which perhaps belongs
to an Indigital goddess, the giver of delight. Her oldes
temple was raised in the grove of Libitina, a goddess o
pleasure and death, and her by-names Murcia and Cloacim
are certainly derived from localities.

Furthermore, Mercurius in the first instance can only hav<
been the Indigital god of merx and mercatura, the spirit o
trade ; it was only by identification with Hermes that hi
became a fully developed god. As however he alway.
remained to a far greater degree than the latter the exclusivi
deity of tradespeople, the purse appears in Italy as his regula:
attribute.

The case is similar with Hercules. Herakles, the favourit
son of Zeus, who dispenses rustic plenty, was confused witl
the creative Genius which was ascribed to luppiter as it wa
to every man in general. In this quality he was joined i;

THE ROMANS 123

wedlock to the luno who represents the productive power of
woman ; then however this exclusively Italian conception so
permeated the purely Greek legend that there arose a variety
of contradictions with the tradition of the feud between Hera
and Herakles.

217. The service of Ceres in Rome is on the other hand
purely Greek. The name, which in its origin certainly
applied to an Indigital goddess, is closely related to ere sco and
creo\ the personality of the goddess however is simply that
of Demeter, who was introduced into Rome under this name
in the year 496 B. c., and in whose worship so little change
was made that even in Rome her priestesses had to be Greeks.

Still more ancient, but no less purely Greek, is the worship
of Apollo, in whose honour the Ludi Apollinares were held
ever after 212 B.C. on July 13, on account of an utterance of
the Sibylline Books. And the ruler of the nether world,
Dis Pater, the husband of Proserpina, is Pluton-Hades taken
over without change; Dis \sdives, the rich one, a translation
of Pluton.

218. In the year 204 B.C. was brought to Rome the
sacred stone of the Magna Mater Idaea of Pessinus, Ma or
Ammas. In 186 B.C. it was necessary to forcibly suppress the
worship of Bacchus, as it was degraded by excesses. Then
came Isis and Sarapis from Alexandria, and finally among
many less important cults the Mysteries or secret rites of the
Persian sun-god Mithras, which had already incorporated
many thoughts and ceremonies of the now advancing Christian
faith, so that the latter found in Rome, as in Greece, a soil
well prepared to ensure its vigorous growth.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The fullest collection of modern literature for Mytholog
is furnished by A. Preuner in Bursian s Jahrbuch, Vol. 2
and for Greek Mythology between the years 1886 and 189
by Fr. Back, ibid. Vol. 26 ; for subsequent years see O
Gruppe, ibid. Vol. 81.

K. O. Mii Her, Prolegomena %u einer wissenschafiliche
Mythologie, Gottingen, 1825.

F. G. Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre, Gottingen, 1857
1862.

L. Preller, Gr. Mythologie, Berlin, 1854; 4th edition b
C. Robert, 1887 1894; Rom. Mythologie, Berlin, 1858
3rd edition by H. Jordan, 1881 1883.

H. D. Miiller, Mythologie der griechischen Stamme, Gottin
gen, 18571869.

J. Overbeck, Griechische Kunstmythologie, Leipzig, 1871 f.

W. H. Roscher, Studien zur vergleichenden Mythologie dt
Griechen und Romer, Leipzig, 1873 ff. ; Studien zur griechis
chen Mythologie und Kulturgeschichte vom vergleichenden Statm
punkte, Leipz., 1878 ff. ; Ausfuhrliches Lexikon der griechischt
und romischen Mythologie, Leipz., 1884 fF.

W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, Berlin, 1877
Mythologische Forschungen, Strassburg, 1884.

E. H. Meyer, Indogermanische My then, Berlin, 1883 f
M. Mayer, Die Giganten und Titanen in der antiken Sage un
Kunst, Berlin, 1887.

U. von Wiiamowitz-MoellendorfF, Euripides Herakles, Vo
I. Berlin, 1889; 2nd edition, 1896.

E. Rohde, Psyche, Freiburg in B., 1890 1894.

O. Gruppe, Die griechis chen Culte und My then in ihre
Beziehungen zu den orientalischen Religionen, Leipz., 1887 fi
Griechische Mythologie u. Religionsgeschichte, forming Vo
V, part ii. of Iwan v. Miiller s Handluch d. klass. Alter
tumsivissenschaft, Munich, 1897, etc.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1*5

J. TopfFer, Attische Genealogic, Berlin, 1889.

J. Langl, Grlechische Gotter- und Heroengestalten, Vienna,
1893.

Pauly, Real- Encyclopaedic d. klass. Altertumswissenschaft,
new ed. by G. Wissowa, Stuttgart, 1894 fF.

F. Hoppe, Bilder zur Mythologie und Geschichte der Griechen
und Romer, Vienna and Olmiitz, 1 896.

A. Steuding, Denkmaler antiker Kunst, Leipz., 1896.

F. von Andrian, Hohencultus, Vienna, 1891.

P. D. C. de la Saussaye, Manual of the Science of Religion,
London, 1891.

Sir W. Smith, Classical Dictionary of Greek Biography,
Mythology, etc., new ed., London, 1894.

Max. Collignon, Manual of Mythology, London, 1890.

E. Burnouf, Science of Religions, London, 1888.

E. Clodd, Myths and Dreams, London, 1885.

J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, new ed., in 3 voll.,
London, 1900.

Andrew Lang, Custom and Myth, new ed., London, 1893.

Myth, Ritual, and Religion, 2 voll., London,

1887.

Miiller & Wieseler, Antike Denkmaler zur griech. Gotter-
lehre ; 4th edition, in 2 voll., Leipzig, 1899, etc.

Otto Gilbert, Griechische Gottcrlehre, Leipzig, 1899.

J. G. Frazer, Pausanias Description of Greece, 6 voll.,
London, 1898.

E. Rohde, Seelencult u. Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen,
2 voll., Freiburg, 1898.

J. B. Carter, De Deorum Romanorum Cognominibus
Quaestiones etc., Leipzig, 1898.

INDEX

(The numbers refer to the paragraphs.}

\CCA LARENTIA, 213

\cheloos, 97, 146

\cheron, 16 f.

\chilleus, 79, 131, 177 ff~.

Admetos, 162

Adonis, 108

Adrastos, 171, 173

Aello, 21

Aesculapius, 22

Agamemnon, 131, 177 ff.

Aganippe, 42

Agenor, 123

Aglaia, 41

Aglauros, 38, 117

Aia, 161, 163

Aiakos, 18

Ails, 179

Aietes, 161, 164 f.

Aigeus, 151 f, 154, 165

A-igis. 3.. 59

Aigisthos, 130 f.

Aigle, 23

Aigyptos, 126 f.

Aineias, 109

Aiolos, 104, 184

Aisa, 119

Aison, 161

Aithiopes, 128, 133

Aithra, 157

Akamas, 157

Alpheios, 97

Altliaia, 159

Amaltheia, 32, 146

Amazons, 78 f, 133, 141, 155

Ambrosia, 38

Ammas : see Ma

Amor : see Eros

Amphiaraos, 4, 171 f.
Amphion, 124 f.
Amphitrlte, 92, 94
Amphitryon, 136 f.
Amykos, 166
Ancestor-worship, 5
Anchises, 109
Ancilia, 205
Androgeos, 153
Andromeda, 128
Angerona, 194
Anna Perenna, 194
Antaios, 142
Anthesteria, 115
Antigone, 170, 173
Antiope, 124
Apaturia, 62
Aphrodite, 107 fF.
Aphrodites, 109
Apollon, 67 fF, 144, 217
Apsyrtos, 165
Arachne, 60
Ares, 105 f.
Arethusa, 97
Argei, 192
Argeiphontes, 126
Argo, 161
Argonautai, 161 fF.
Argos, 86, 126
Ariadne, 117, 153
Anon, 72

96, 173

Aristaios, 70
Armilustrium, 205
Artemis, 75 fF.
Asklepios, 22 f.
Astarte, 108

127

128

INDEX

Asterie, 80
Astraios, 104
Atalante, 160
Athamas, 163
Athena, 53 ff.
Atlas, 142
Atreus, 130 f.
Atropos, 119
Augeias, 140
Augures, 12, 207
Aurora : see Eos
Avia Larvarum, 113

Bacchantes, 113
Bacchos : tee Dionysos
Baitylos, 12
Bellerophontes, 133
Bellona, 105
Bona Dea, 199, 201
Boreas, 104, 166
Briseis, 178, 181
Busiris, 142

Cacus, 141

Camenae, 191

Carmenta, 191

Ceres, 217

Chalkeia, 56, 62

Chads, 33, 105, 113

Charites, 39, 41

Charon, 17

Charybdis, 93, 185

Cheiron, 23, 139, 161

Chimaira, 133

Chrysaor, 59

Chryseis, 178

Chryses, 178

Chytroi, 3

Cities, personifications of, 44

dementia, 214

Concordia, 214

Census, 198

Cretan Bull, 141, 152 f.

Cupido : tee Himeros

Daemons, 6, 191

Damastes, 151

Danae, 36, 128

Danai des, 127

Danaos, 126 f.

Dea Muta, Tacita, 213

Dead, conjuration of, 3 ; judg
ment of, 1 8

Deianeira, 146 f.

Deidameia, 156

Deimos, 105, 107

Delia, 70

Delphyne, 69

Demeter, 36, 45 ff.

Demophon, 47, 156

Despoina, 52

Destiny : see Fate

Di parentes, 188

Diana, 203

Di ke, 39, 43

Diomedes, 141, 171 f.

Dione, 36, 107

Dionysia, 115

Dionysos, 49, 113 ff, 153, 218

Dioskoroi, i34f.

Dirke, 124

Discordia, 105

Dis Pater, 24, 217

Dithyrambos, 115

DTus Fidius, 209

Dragon, 106, 123, 142, 165
164 f.

Dreams, i, 4, 87, 149, 272

Dryades, 99

Earthquakes, 35, 63, 95
Egeria, 191

Eileithyla : see Ileithyia
Eirene, 39, 43
Elektra, 131
Eleusinia, 49 ff.
Elysion, 18, 123
Endymion, 101
Enyo, 105
Eos, 103
Epaphos, 126
Epigonoi, 167, 174

INDEX

119

Epikaste, 168, 170
Equirria, 205
Erato, 42

Erechtheus, 53, 55, 150
Erichthonios, 44, 55
Erinyes, 19 f, 106, 131, 174
Eriphyle, 171
Eris, 105
Eros, 107, in f.
Ersephoria, 56
Erymanthian Boar, 139
Erytheia, 141
Eryx, 141
Eteokles, 170 ff.
Euanthes, 117
Eumaios, 186
Eumenides, 19
Eunomia, 39, 43
Euphrosyne, 41
Europe, 1*3
Euros, 104
Euryganeia, 170
Eurykleia, 186
Eurynome, 64
Eurystheus, 130, 137, 143
Eurytos, 144
Euterpe, 42
Evander, 191, 199

Fata, Fate, 119
Fauna, 199, 201
Faunus, 199 f.
Febris, 214
Feralia, 188
Feriae Latinae, 210
Feronia, 201
Futiales, 209
Fides, 209, 214
Flamines, 206, 211
Flora, 202 f.
Fons, Fontus, 191
Fortuna, 121, 214
Furiae : tee Erinyes

Gaia, Ge, 36, 44
Galateia, 92

Ganymedes, 38
Genii, 188, 209
Geryoneus, 141
Giants, Gigantes, 34
Glaukos, 91

Gods, conceptions of, 7 ff.
Gorgones, 59, 128
Gratiae : see Charites
Graves, worship at, 3

Hades, 24, 46, 49, 143
Haimon, 169
Halieia, 100
Hallos Geron, 91, 146
Hamadryades, 99
Harmonia, 107, 123
Harpies, Harpyiai, 21, 166
Haruspicina, 12
Hebe, 37, 143
Hekate, 80 f.
Hektor, i8of.

Helena, 131, I34f, 156, 179
Helios, 100, 185
Helle, 163
Hellotia, 123
Heosphoros, 102
Hephaisteia, 62
Hephaistos, 56, 62 ff.
HGra, 37, 126, 136 f, 143
Herakles, 136 ff, 162
Hercules, 143, 216
Hermaphrodites, 109
Hermes, 82 ff, no, 126
Hermione, 131
Heroes, 41", 18, 123 ff.
Herse, 55
Hesperides, 142
Hestia, 66

Hileithya : see Ileithyia
Himeros, 112
Hippodameia, 130, 156
Hippokrene, 42, 59
Hippolyte, 141, 155
Hippolytos, 155
Hippomedon, 171
Hippomenes, 160

K

130

INDEX

Honos, 214

Kalliope, 42

Horai, 39, 43

Kallynteria, 57

Hyades, 116

Kalydon, Hunt of, 159 f.

Hyakinthia, 70

Kalypso, 1 82 f, 185

Hyakinthos, 71

Kapaneus, 171 f.

Hybris, 120

Karneia, 70

Hydra, 138

Karpo, 43

Hygieia, 23, 54

Kastalia, 42

Hyllos, 147

Kastor, I34f,

Hyperboreioi, 73

Kedalion, 63

Hype rmestra, 127

Kekrops, 150

Hypnos, 24

Kentauroi (Centaurs), 139

156

lacchos, 49, 114

Kepheus, 128

Ian us, 191, 194^

Kerberos, 17, 143

lasion, 47

Keres, 3, 105

laso, 23

Kerkopes, 145

lason, 161 ff.

Kerkyon, 151

Idas, 135

Kerykeion, 85

Ileithyla, 37, 75

Keryneia, Hind of, 139

Inachos, 126

Keto, 91

Incubatio, 4

Kikones, 184

Indigetes, 190

Kilix, 123

Infer!, 188

Kirke, 81, 185

Ino, 92, 123, 163, 183

Kleio, 42

16, 126

Klotho, 119

lokaste, 168, 170

Klymene, 100

lolaos, 138

Klytaimestra, 131, 134

lole, 144, 147

Klytia, 100

Ion, 150

Kokytos, 1 6

Iphigeneia, 131

Kore, 46 ff.

Iphitos, 144

Kreon, 137, 165, 168 f.

Iris, 103

Kreusa, 150

Isis, 218
Islands of the Blest, 18

Krommyon, Sow of, 151
Kronos, 32, 45, 198

Ismene, 170

Kybele, 32, 78

Isthmia, 94

Kyklopes, 33, 63, 184

Itonoi, 145

Kyknos, 145

luno, 1 88, 211 f, 216

luppiter (Jupiter), 26, 207 ff.

Labdakos, 168

IQturna, 191

Labyrinth, 153

luventas, 207

Lachesis, 119

Ixion, 139

Ladon, 142

Laertes, 186

Kadmos, 123, 166

Laios, 1 68 f

Kalais, 166

Laistrygones, 185

INDEX

Lamios, 145

Lapithai, 156

Lara, 213

Lares, 189
| Larvae, 188
j Latona : see Leto

Laurel, 68, 72, 115

Leda, 134
i Lemures, 188

Lemuria, 188

Lenaia, 115

Lerna, Hydra of, 138

Lethe, 16
, Leto, 73, 77, 125

Leukothea, 92, 183

Liber Pater, 200

Libera, 200

Libertas, 214

Libitina, 216

Lichas, 147

Linos, 137

Lotophagoi, 184
" Lucifer, 102

Lucina, 212

Ludi, 198, 202, 210, 217

Luna : see Selene

Lupercalia, 199

Lurjerci, 129

Lykaia, 29

Lykaon, 29

Lykomedes, 157

Lykos, 124

Lykurgos, 117

Lynkeus, 127 f.

Ma, 78, 113, 218
Machaon, 23
Magna Mater, 218
Maia, 88, 197
Mainades, 113
Manes, 188
Mania, 213

Marathon, Bull of, 152
Mars, 104 f, 112
Marsyas, 98
Miter Matuta, 203

Matralia, 203

Matronalia, 212

Medeia, 81, 152, 161, 164 f.

Meditrinalia, 207

Medusa, 59, 128

Megara, 137

Meilanion, 160

Meleagros, 159 f.

Melikertes, 92

Melpomene, 42

Melqart, 92, 149 ,

Memnon, 103

Men, creation of, 65 ; sacrifice

of, 2, 29, 70, 105, 131, 153,

163, 192, 203, 205
Menelaos, 131, 179, 182
Menestheus, 157
Menios, 140
Mercurius, 84, 216
Metis, 39, 60
Minerva, 211, 215
Minos, 18, 123, 153
Minotauros, 152 f, 158
Minyas, 117
Mithras, 218
Mnemosyne, 42
Moirai, 39, 119, 159
Moon, 100 f, 203
Muses, 39, 42, 114, 191
Myrmidones, 180
Mysteries, 49 rf, 218

Naiades, 99
Narkissos, 46
Nausikaa, 184
Nectar, 38
Nekysia, 3
Nemean Lion, 138
Nemesia, 3, 120
Nemesis, 120, 135
Nephele, 139, 163
Neptunus, 193
Nereides, 92
Nereus, 91
Nessos, 147
Nestor, 180, 182

INDEX

Nether World, 17 ff, 24, 213
Nightmares, i
Nike, 31, 54, 61
Nile, 97
Niobe, 125, 130
Notes, 104
Numa, 191, 205
Nymphs, 99, 1 16

Odysseus, 182 tf.

Ogygia, 183

Oidipus, 167 ff.

Oineus, 146, 159, 171

Oinomaos, 130

Oinopion, 117

Okeanos, 91

Okypete, 21

Omphale, 145

Ops, 198

Oracles, 12, 44, 68 f, 149, 172

Orcus, 213

Oreiades, 99

Oreithyia, 104

Orestes, 131

Orgia, 113, 218

Orion, 77, 102

Orpheus, 18, 42, 116

Oschophoria, 115, 154

Palaimon, 92

Pales, 202 f.

Pallas, 152

Pallas Athena: see Athena

Pan, 90

Panakeia, 23

Panathenaia, 57

Pandaros, 179

Pandora, 65

Pandrosos, 55

Panionia, 94

Parcae, 119

Paris, 109, 131, 179

Parthenopaios, 171

Pasiphae, 153

Patroklos, 180 f.

Pax, 214

Pegasos, 59, 133

Peirithoos, 156

Peitho, 107

Pelias, 161 f.

Pelops, 130

Penates, 189, 196

Penelope, 183, 186

Pentheus, 117

Periphetes, 151

Perse, 164

Persephone, 24, 52, 156

Perses, 80

Perseus, 128

Personifications, 39, 44, 105, 1 1:

1 20 f, 214
Phaethon, 100
Phaiakes, 183
Phaidra, 155, 157
Philoitios, 186
Philoktetes, 147
Phlneus, 166
Phobos, 105, 107
Phoibos (Phoebus): see Apollo
Phoinix, 123
Pholos, 139
Phorkys, 91
Phosphorc.s, 102
Phrixos, 163
Pietas, 214
Pittheus, 151
Pityokamptes : see Sinis
Pleiades, 102
Pluton, 24: see Hades
Plutos, 43, 47
Plynteria, 57
Podaleirios, 23
Poias, 147

Pollux: see Polydeukes
Polybos, 1 68
Polydeukes, 134 f, 166
Polymnia, 42
Polyneikes, 170 ff.
Polypemon, 151
Polyphemos, 92, 184
Pomegranate, 46
Pomona, 200

INDEX

133

Pontifices, 190, 192, 196
Portunus, 195
Poseidon, 52 f, 94 ff, 150 f.
Pothos, 112
Praxidikai, 19
Prayer, 10
Priamos, i&o
Priapos, 117
Procharisteria, 56
Proitos, 117
Prokrustes, 151
Prometheus, 65, 142
Proserpina, 200
Proteus, 91
Psyche, 16, 112
Pudicitia, 214
Purification, 10, 29,72
Pyanopsia, 154
Pylades, 131
Pyriphlegethon, 16
Pythia, 68
Pythian Games, 69
Python, 69

Quinquatrus, 205
Quirinus, 206

Rlligi5, 9
Remus, 205
Rex Sacrorum, 194
Rhadamanthys, 18, 123
Rhea, 33, 45, 78
River-gods, 97, 192
Robigus, 202
Romulus, 205 f.

Sabazios, 49, 113

Sacrifice, n ; see Men

Salii, 205 f.

Salus, 214

Sarapis (Serapis), 218

Saturnus, 198

U..*.. ... OA

OdtUl 11U3,

Satyrs, 89
Seirios, 102
Selene, 90, 100 f.
Semele, 36, 116,

123

Semnai, 19

Sibylline Books, 193, 215

Silenoi, 98

Silvanus, 200

Sinis, 151

Sirens, 185

Sisyphos, 132

Skiron, 151

Skirophoria, 56

Skylla, 93, 185

Snake, 3, 33, 114, 123, 133, 135,

137, 188
Sol : see Helios
Solymoi, 133
Souls, i ff, 15 ff, 87, 114, i88f.;

in beasts, 3
Spartoi, 123, 137
Spes, 214
Sphinx, 169
Staphylos, 117
Stars, 102

Storms, 26, 33, 207
Strophios, 131
Stymphalos, birds of, 139
Styx, 16 f.
Summanus, 208
Sun, 33, 73, 100 f.
Syleus, 145
Symplegades, 166
Synoikia, 154

Tainiai, 9, 41, 112
Tantalos, 19, 129
Tartaros, 18, 33
Teiresias, 170
Telamon, 179
Telemachos, 182, 186
Tellus, 213
Terminus, 209
Terpsichore, 42
TSthys, 91
Thaleia, 41, 42
Thallo, 43
Thanatos, 24, 112
Thargelia, 70
Themis, 39, 43, 119

34

INDEX

Thersandros, 174
Theseia, 157

Theseus, 141, 143, 150 ff.
Thesmophoria, 48
Thetis, 64, 92, 178 f.
Thrinakia, 100, 185
Thyestes, 130
Thyiades, 113
Tiberinus, 192
Tilphossa, 106
Titanes, 33, 116
Tithonos, 103
Tityos, 73
Tragedy, 115
Tree-worship, 7, 27
Trinakria: see Thrinakia
Triptolemos, 48
Triton, 91
Trivia, 80
Trophonios, 22
Tubilustrium, 205
Tyche, 121
Tydeus, 171 f, 179
Tyndareos, 134
Typhoeus, 35

Ulixes : set Odysseus
Orania, 42
tJranos, 36, 109

Veiovis, 208
Venus, 216
Ver Sacrum, 205
Vertumnns, 200, 203
Vesta, 189, 195 f.
Victoria : see Nike
Vinalia, 207
Virtus, 214
Volcanus (Vulcan), 197

Water, 91 ff, 191 ff.
Wind, 104, 184
Wolf, 29, 72, 205

Zagreus, 116
Zephyros, 103 f.
Zet s, 1 66
Zethos, 124

Zeus, 26 ff. ; Asterios, 123, 153
Chthonios, 24, 32

(For names sometimes if tit -with initial A F,, C, J, and OE, see respectively
under AI, K, I, and 01 J

Mchard Claj V Sou, Limited, London Of Bun S aj.

CO

o

60 GREEK RELIGION FROM THE

taken by Eos or Dawn (Latin Aurora), the sister of Helios
and Selene. As giver of the morning dews she carries
pitchers in her hands. To denote the brightness of the
break of day she has a saffron-yellow robe, arms and fingers
of rosy splendour, and wings of a brilliant white ; on account
of her speed she is often portrayed as riding on a car. Her
spouse is Tithonos, a brother of Priamos ; her son Memnon
is killed by Achilleus. Like Orion, she carried away
Tithonos as a comely stripling, and obtained for him from
Zeus immortality but not eternal youth ; hence he withers
away by her side and lives a wretched life in a decrepit old
age until, according to later story, he is changed into a cicada.

The speed with which the rainbow casts its span from
heaven to earth makes Iris, who typifies it, the gods mes
senger ; to her therefore pertain great wings, a short garment
of rainbow hue, and the herald s staff (K^pw/ceiov). In the
older parts of the Iliad she is the messenger of Zeus ; later
her place in his service is taken by Hermes, while she her
self is henceforth an attendant of Hera. As the rainbow was
deemed the harbinger of rain, she was wedded to Zephyros,
the rain-wind.

104. The gods of the winds were conceived in the oldest
times under the form of horses, like the Harpies described
above ( 21), whom they often pursue as enemies or lovers ;
later they appear as widely striding bearded men with wings
on their shoulders and often also on their feet. Sometimes
they are depicted with a double face looking forwards and
backwards, which doubtless refers to the change in the direc
tion of the wind. In earlier ages they were distinguished only
into Boreas (North wind), Zephyros (West wind), Notos
(South wind), and somewhat later Euros (East wind), who
are accounted sons of Astraios ( Starry Heaven ) and Eos
( Dawn ). Like the Harpies, they are by nature robbers;
Boreas in particular ravishes away the lovely Oreithyia, the
daughter of Erechtheus, from the banks of the Ilissos perhaps
a picture of the morning mist swept away by the wind. Their
lord is Aiolos ( Swift ), who dwells on a floating island in

BEGINNING OF THE HOMERIC AGE 61

the far West, and keeps the winds inclosed in a cavern, the
Cave of the Winds.

VIII. Ares and Aphrodite. 105. Ares (compare
dpeiW, apioTos, dper^) was originally the chief god of Thracian
tribes that had forced their way into Thessaly, Boiotia, and
Phokis, and was probably also like Hades a death-god dwelling
in the depths of earth. In his native land human sacrifices were
offered to him. As befitted the character of his worshippers, he
developed into the furious god of war, and in this quality alone
he was allowed entrance into Greece. From his ancient
by-name JSiyoBot t which seemingly is connected with the
wild cry of battle, arose his attendant the murderous war-
goddess Enyo (Latin Bellono}) and later were associated
with him in the same way Deimos and Phobos, Eris the god
dess of strife (Latin Discordta), and the Keres, the bringers
of death in battle, figured as black women in bloody garb,
who are strictly to be regarded as themselves souls of the
dead. He represents however merely the power of war s
brute violence, and hence must give way before Athena and
her favourites.

1 06. In Greece Ares is reckoned the son of Zeus and
Hera ; and in Thebes, the most important seat of his worship,
his wife is Aphrodite. The latter s place however was
earlier held by the Erinys Tilphossa, a death-goddess and
well-spirit, by whom Ares begot the dragon (his own image)
that dwelt in a cavern by a spring near the historic city.
Later epos, probably taking the Lemnian point of view, con
nects Aphrodite with Hephaistos as his wife and makes Ares
her paramour. Her place was occupied by the nymph
Aglauros in Athens, where he was worshipped on the Areios
Pagos or Hill of Ares as presiding over manslayers atone
ment and trial for bloodshed.

Art figures Ares as a man of youthful strength, in older
times bearded and fully armed, later beardless and wearing
only a helmet and chlamys. His symbol is the spear, in
ritual the torch, which probably indicates the devastation
wrought by war.